Three Years Among the Indians and Mexicans

By Gen. Thomas James,

of Monroe County, Illinois

Waterloo, Ill
Printed at the Office of the "War Eagle."

1846

Contents

Introduction — Missouri Fur Company — Terms of Engagement with them — Departure for
the Trapping Grounds — Incidents on the Route — The Pork
Meeting — Scenery — Check — A Western Pioneer — His affair with the Irishman — A
Hunting Excursion — The Rickarees — The Mandans — The Gros Ventres — The
Company's Fort — Cheek and Ried — Friends between the French and
Americans — Violation of Contract by Company — Departure for Upper
Missouri — Wintering — Trip across the Country — Famine and Cold — Scenery on the
Yellow Stone — Manuel's Fort — Col. Menard and Manuel Liza — Indian Murders — A
Snow Storm in the Mountains — Blindness — Arrival at the Forks of the Missouri —
Preparations for business.

Colter's Race and escapes — Separation for trapping — Descent of the Missouri — A fine
Landscape — Bad luck — Alarm from Indians — Retreat to the Fort — Death of
Cheek — Pursuit of the Indians — Return — The White Bears — Incidents of
hunting — Return to the Twenty Five Yard river — A party of Gros Ventres — Suspected
Robbery — Interview with the Crows — Rapid crossing of the Yellow Stone — Descent to
the Fort and the "Cache" — Robbery made certain — Passage to the Missouri — Indian
character and customs — A Spree, ending almost tragically — Generosity of the
Company — Settlement with them — A sage reflection.

Employment from 1810 to 1821 — The First Santa Fe Traders — Members of the Fourth
Santa Fe expedition — Ascent of the Arkansas — Vaugean — Removal of the Town of
Little Rock — Fort Smith and Major Bradford — Trading with the Osages — Capt.
Prior — Salt River — Salt Plains and Shining Mountains — Robbery by the
Indians — Sufferings from thirst — Attack by the Indians — Further Robberies — The One
Eyed Chief and Big Star — Indian Council — Critical Situation — Rescue by Spanish
officers — Cordaro — Journey continued — San Miguil Peccas and its Indian
inhabitants — Santa Fe — Farming.

Interview with Governor Malgaris — Commencement of business — Departure of
McKnight — Arrival of Cordaro — His Speech — His visit to Nacotoche — His death and
character — Hugh Glenn — Celebration of Mexican Independence — Gambling and
dissipation — Mexican Indians — Domestic manufactures — Visit of the Utahs — Their
Horses — Speech of the Chief Lechat — War with the Navahoes — Cowardly murder of
their Chiefs by the Spaniards — Militia of Santa Fe — Attempt to go to Senoria — Stopped
by the Governor — Interview with the Adjutant — Selling out — Hugh Glenn again — How
the Governor paid me a Debt — Spanish Justice — Departure for home.

Col. Glenn's conversion — His profits thereby —
Avenues to New Mexico — An instance of
Spanish treachery and cruelty — Glenn's cowardice — Meeting with the
Pawnees — Mexican Indians — Battle between the Pawnees and
Osages — Disappearance of Glenn — Chouteau and the Osages — Indian
revenge — Passage of the Shoshoua — Singular Ferrying — Entrance into
Missouri — Robbery by the Osages — Interview with Missionaries — Arrival at St.
Louis — More of Glenn — Home — Still greater troubles with creditors than with the
Indians.

Endeavors to get out of debt — Proposition of
John McKnight — Preparations for another
expedition — Journey to the Arkansas — Ascent of the Canadian and North
Fork — Hunting Bears, Elks, &c. — Fort commenced — Conversation with McKnight and
his departure in search of Camanches — Continued ascent of the Canadian North
Fork — A new Fort — Return of Potter and Ivy — Robert McKnight goes out in search of
his brother — He returns with Indians — Charges them with the murder of his brother — I
go out to the Camanche village — Incidents there — A council — The One Eyed
Chief — The whole band start for the Fort — A guard placed over me — Encampment — The
One Eyed adopts me as his brother — He changes my relations with his
tribes — Catching wild horses — Arrival at the Fort — Fright of some "brave"
men — Trade — A robbery — The One Eyed punishes the thieves — Fate of John
McKnight — Mourning stopped — Indian customs — A dance — A case of arbitration by the
One Eyed — Indian horsemanship — Parting with the Chiefs — Conversation with
Alsarea — The horse Checoba — A Bucephalus.

We start for home — A stampedo — Loss of a hundred horses — Interview with a
Chief
and his tribe — Pursued by Indians — Passage through the Cross Timbers — Death of
horses by flies — Night travelling — Arrival at the Arkansas — Death of horses by the
Feresy — Loss of skins and robes by embezzlement — Start for home — Breakfast with a
Cherokee Chief — James Rogers — An old Cherokee — Interview with
Missionaries — Arrival at home — Troubles from debt — An emergence at
last — Conclusion.

Chapter I

Introduction — Missouri Fur Company — Terms of Engagement with them — Departure for
the Trapping Grounds — Incidents on the Route — The Pork
Meeting — Scenery — Check — A Western Pioneer — His affair with the Irishman — A
Hunting Excursion — The Rickarees — The Mandans — The Gros Ventres — The
Company's Fort — Cheek and Ried — Friends between the French and
Americans — Violation of Contract by Company — Departure for Upper
Missouri — Wintering — Trip across the Country — Famine and Cold — Scenery on the
Yellow Stone — Manuel's Fort — Col. Menard and Manuel Liza — Indian Murders — A
Snow Storm in the Mountains — Blindness — Arrival at the Forks of the Missouri —
Preparations for business.

I HAVE OFTEN amused myself and friends, by relating stories of my adventures in the
West, and am led to believe, by the, perhaps, too partial representations of those
friends, that my life in the Prairies and Mountains for three years, is worthy of a record
more enduring than their memories. I have passed a year and a half on the head
waters of the Missouri and among the gorges of the Rocky Mountains, as a hunter and
a trapper, and two years among the Spaniards and Camanches. I have suffered much
from the inclemency of nature and of man, had many "hair breadth 'scapes" and
acquired considerable information illustrative of Indian and Mexican character and
customs. By a plain, unvarnished tale of Western life, of perils and of hardships, I hope
to amuse the reader who delights in accounts of wild adventure, though found out of the
pages of a novel and possessing no attraction but their unadorned truthfulness. I am
now on the shady side of sixty, with mind and memory unimpaired. If my reminiscences,
as recorded in the following pages, serve to awaken my countrymen of the West and
South-west, now thank God, including Texas, to the importance of peaceful and friendly
relations with the most powerful tribe of Indians on the continent, the Camanches, I
shall not regard the labor of preparing these sheets as bestowed in vain.

In the year 1803, when twenty-two years of age, I emigrated with my father from
Kentucky to Illinois. In the spring of 1807 we removed from Illinois to Missouri, which
were then, both Territories, and settled in the town of St. Ferdinand, near St. Louis. In
the fall of this year, Lewis and Clark returned from Oregon and the Pacific Ocean,
whither they had been sent by the administration of Jefferson in the first exploring
expedition west of the Rocky Mountains, and their accounts of that wild region, with
those of their companions, first excited a spirit of trafficking adventure among the young
men of the West. They had brought with them from the Upper Missouri, a Chief named
Shehaka, of the Mandan tribe of Indians. This Chief, in company with Lewis and Clark
visited the "Great Father" at Washington City, and returned to St. Louis in the following
Spring (1808) with Lewis, who, in the mean time had been appointed Governor of
Missouri Territory. He sent the Chief Shehaka up the Missouri with an escort of about
forty United States troops, under Capt. Prior. On their arrival in the country of the
Rickarees, a warlike tribe, next East or this side of the Mandans, they were attacked by
the former tribe, and eight or ten soldiers killed. This event so disheartened the rest,
that they returned with Shehaka to St. Louis. The Missouri Fur Company had just been
formed, and they projected an expedition up the Missouri and to the Rocky Mountains,
which was to start in the spring of the following year, 1809. The company consisted of
ten partners, among whom was M. Gratiot, Pierre Menard, Sam'l. Morrison, Pierrie
Chouteau, Manuel Liza, Major Henry, M. L'Abbadeau and Reuben Lewis. Gov. Lewis
was also said to have had an interest in the concern. The company contracted with him
to convey the Mandan Chief to his tribe, for the sum, as I was informed of $10,000. I
enlisted in this expedition, which was raised for trading with the Indians and trapping for
beaver on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia rivers. The whole party, at
starting, consisted of 350 men, of whom about one half were Americans and the
remainder Canadian Frenchmen and Creoles of Kaskaskia, St. Louis and other places.
The French were all veteran voyageurs, thoroughly inured to boating and trapping.
Manuel Liza, called by the men "Esaw" had enlisted many of them in Detroit for this
expedition, and hired them by the year. We Americans were all private adventurers,
each on his own hook, and were led into the enterprise by the promises of the
company, who agreed to subsist us to the trapping grounds, we helping to navigate the
boats, and on our arrival there they were to furnish us each with a rifle and sufficient
ammunition, six good beaver traps and also four men of their hired French, to be under
our individual commands for a period of three years. By the terms of the contract each
of us was to divide one-fourth of the profits of our joint labor with the four men thus to
be appointed to us. How we were deceived and taken in, will be seen in the sequel. The
"company" made us the fairest promises in St. Louis, only to break them in the Indian
country. Liza, or Esaw, or Manuel as he was variously called, had the principal
command. He was a Spaniard or Mexican by birth, and bore a very bad reputation in
the country and among the Americans. He had been on the head waters of the
Missouri, the year before with a company of about fifty men and had met with great
success in catching beaver and trading with the Indians. He had built a Fort, called
"Manuel's Fort" at the junction or fork of the Big Horn and Yellow Stone rivers, and left a
garrison of hunters in it when he returned in the Spring of this year, and went into the
Missouri Fur Company. He was suspected of having invited the Rickarees to attack the
Government troops under Capt. Prior, with Shehaka the year before, for the purpose of
preventing the traders and trappers who were with the troops from getting into the
upper country. Mr. Choteau and Col. Menard acted jointly with Liza in conducting the
expedition. I went as steersman or "captain" of one of the barges, with about twenty-four men, all
Americans, under my command. There were thirteen barges and keel
boats in all. On my barge I had Doct. Thomas, the surgeon of the company, and
Reuben Lewis, brother of Merryweather Lewis, the Governor.

We started from St. Louis in the month of June, A. D. 1809, and ascended the Missouri
by rowing, pushing with poles, cordeling, or pulling with ropes, warping, and
sailing.
My
crew were light hearted, jovial men, with no care or anxiety for the future, and little fear
of any danger. In the morning we regularly started by day break and stopped, generally,
late at night. The partners or bourgoises, as the French called them, were in the
forward barge, with a strong crew of hardy and skilful voyageurs, and there Liza and
some of his colleagues forded it over the poor fellows most arrogantly, and made them
work as if their lives depended on their getting forward, with the greatest possible
speed. They peremptorily required all the boats to stop in company for the night, and
our barge being large and heavily loaded, the crew frequently had great difficulty in
overtaking them in the evening. We occasionally had races with some of the forward
barges, in which my crew of Americans proved themselves equal in a short race to their
more experienced French competitors. We thus continued, with nothing of interest
occurring till we passed the Platte. Six weeks of hard labor on our part, had been spent,
when our allotted provisions gave out and we were compelled to live on boiled corn,
without salt. At the same time all the other boats were well supplied and the gentlemen
proprietors in the leading barge were faring in the most sumptuous and luxurious
manner. The French hands were much better treated on all occasions than the
Americans. The former were employed for a long period at stated wages and were
accustomed to such service and such men as those in command of them, while we
were private adventurers for our own benefit, as well as that of the company, who
regarded us with suspicion and distrust. Many Americans on the passage up the river,
disgusted with the treatment they received, fell off in small companies and went back.
At Cote Sans Desans, opposite the mouth of the Osage, most of them returned. On
reaching the Mandan country we numbered about ten Americans, having started from
St. Louis with about one hundred and seventy-five and an equal number of French.
After passing the Platte river my crew were worn down with hard labor and bad fare.
Their boiled corn without salt or meat, did not sustain them under the fatigue of
navigating the barge and the contrast between their treatment and that of the French
enraged them. A meeting was the result. The company had, on our barge, thirty barrels
of pork, and one morning my crew came to me in a body demanding some of these
provisions. I commanded them not to break into the pork without permission, and
promised, if they would work and keep up till noon, to procure some for dinner. At noon
when we stopped, the men rolled up a barrel of pork on to the deck and one of them,
named Cheek bestrided with a tomahawk, crying out "give the word Captain." I forbade
them, as before, and went ashore to find Lewis, who had left the boat at the beginning
of trouble. He said the pork was the company's and told me not to touch it. I said the
men would and should have some of it, and went back to the boat to give the "word" to
Cheek. Lewis hastened to the "bourgeoise" in their barge close by, to give the alarm.
I
could see them in their cabin, from the shore where I stood, playing cards and drinking.
Lewis entered with the news that "James' crew were taking the provisions." Manuel Liza
seized his pistols and ran out followed by the other partners. "What the devil, said he to
me, is the matter with you and your men?" We are starving, said I, and we must have
something better than boiled corn. At the same time Cheek was brandishing his
tomahawk over the pork barrel and clamoring for the "word." "Shall I break it open
Captain, speak the word," he cried, while the rest of my crew were drawn up in line on
the boat, with rifles, ready for action. The gentlemen bourgeoise, yielded before this
determined array, and gave us a large supply of pork; that is, as much as we pleased to
take. A few days after this we stopped to clean out the barges and the pork in ours was
removed to another and its place supplied with lead. The Cheek who figured as ring-leader on
this
occasion was a Tennesseean, about six feet high and well proportioned.
His courage was equal to any enterprise, and his rashness and headstrong obstinacy at
last, in the Indian country, cost him his life. I had on my barge a large, lazy, and very
impertinent Irishman, who was frequently very sulky and remiss in his duties. I was
compelled one day, to call him by name for not working at the oars, saying to him he
was not rowing the weight of his head. The height of disgrace among boatsmen is, to
be publicly named by the Captain. The Irishman took my treatment in very ill humour
and swore he would have satisfaction for the insult. When the boat stopped for
breakfast, the men dispersed as usual, to get wood, and with them went Cheek and my
friend, the Irishman. Cheek returned without him and informed me, he had whipped him
"for saucing the captain." I said, Cheek I can attend to my own fighting without your
assistance, or any other man's. "No by G — d said he, my Captain shan't fight while I am
about." The Irishman returned, at length, to the boat, but was so badly hurt as to be
unable to work for several days.

The scenery of the Upper Missouri is so familiar to the world as to render any particular
description unnecessary. As you ascend the river, the woods diminish in number and
extent. Beyond Council Bluffs, about 700 miles above the mouth they entirely
disappear, except on the river bottoms, which are heavily timbered. The Prairies were
covered with a short thick grass, about three or four inches high. At this time the game
was very abundant. We saw Elk and Buffalo in vast numbers, and killed many of them.
Prairie dogs and wolves were also very numerous. The Indians have thinned off the
game since that time, so much that their own subsistence is frequently very scanty, and
they are often in danger of starvation. Their range for hunting now extends far down
into the Camanche country and Texas, and the buffalo, their only game of importance,
are fast disappearing. When these valuable animals are all gone, when they are extinct
on the West as they are on the East side of the Mississippi, then will the Indian race,
the aboriginals of that vast region, be near their own extinction and oblivion. They
cannot survive the game and with it will disappear.

The Western declivity of the Mississippi valley from the mountains to the "Father of
Waters" is nearly all one great plain, with occasional rocky elevations. We saw hills at
the foot of which were large heaps of pumice stone, which had the appearance of
having been crumbled off from above by the action of fire. The scenery of Illinois or
Missouri is a fair example of that of the whole country West to the mountains. The
Prairies here, however, are vaster and more desolate. One extensive plain is usually
presented to the eye of the traveller, and stretches to the horizon, without a hill, mound,
tree or shrub to arrest the sight.

We continued our ascent of the river without any occurrence of importance. Below
Council Bluffs we met Capt. Crooks, agent for John J. Astor, and who was trading with
the Mohaws. Here all the few Americans remaining, with myself, were on the point of
returning. By the solicitations and promises of the company we were induced to
continue with them.

The first Indians we saw were a party of Mohaws hunting; with them were two Sioux
Chiefs. They sent forward a runner to their village above and themselves came on
board our boats. We found the village at the mouth of the Jaques river, perhaps twelve
hundred miles, by its course, from the mouth of the Missouri. They were of the Teton
tribe, which is kindred with the Sioux. As we approached the bank, which was lined with
hundreds; they fired into the water before the forward barge, and as we landed, they
retreated with great rapidity, making a startling noise with whistles and rattles. After
landing and making fast the boats, about fifty savages took charge of them, as a guard.
They wore raven feathers on the head. Their bodies were naked, save about the
middle, and painted entirely black. They presented on the whole a most martial and
warlike appearance in their savage mode, and performed their office of guarding the
boats so well that not even a Chief was allowed to go onto them. Other Indians came
with buffalo skins to be used as pulanquins or litters for carrying the partners to their
council house; each was taken up and carried off in state. I was compelled by some
Indians to go in the same style to the place of council. Here was a large company of old
men awaiting us, and for dinner we had served up a great feast of dog's meat — a great
delicacy with the Indians. The rich repast was served in forty-one wooden bowls, as I
counted them, and from each bowl a dog's foot was hanging out, evidently to prove that
this rarity was not a sham but a reality. Not feeling very desirous of eating of this
particular dainty, I stole out and was pulled by a young Indian and invited to his
wigwam. I went and partook with him of buffalo meat. We stayed with these hospitable
savages two days. On arriving, we found the British flag flying, but easily persuaded
them to haul it down. The Hudson's Bay Company had had their emisaries among them
and were then dealing with them precisely as they are now dealing with the savages in
our territory of Oregon — namely: buying them up with presents and promises, and
persuading them to act as allies of Britain, in any future war with the United States. On
the third day we left the friendly Tetons and proceeded up the river as before. Capt.
Choteau had conceived a prejudice against Cheek, and on one occasion, ordered him
to leave the boats. Lewis conveyed the order to me. I remonstrated against the cruelty
of sending a man adrift in a wilderness, 1400 miles from home. He insisted, and Cheek
took his gun as if he was going to obey. Lewis ordered him to leave the gun behind,
which he refused to do. Lewis then commanded me to take it from him. I replied, that
he or Choteau might do that themselves. The men of my boat flew to their arms, and
avowed their determination of defending Cheek and sharing his fate. The order was not
pursued any further. Such recontres and difficulties between the Americans and the
partners, embittered their hands against us, and ultimately did us no good. Much of the
ill treatment we afterwards received from them, was probably owing to the reckless
assertion of our independence on every occasion and at every difficulty that occurred.
After leaving the Teton village, our boat again failed of provisions, and by request of
Lewis I went ashore on the North bank with one of our best hunters, named Brown, to
kill some game. We went up the river, and in the evening, killed an elk, brought it to the
river bank, and waited there for the boats till morning. They came up on the opposite
shore and sent over a canoe to take us and our game across. The wind rose in the
mean time, and blew so strong as to raise the waves very high, and render it dangerous
for us all to cross together in the same canoe. We sent over the game and Brown and
myself continued our course, afoot, expecting to get aboard when the boats crossed at
some one of the river bends. By the middle of the day the wind had risen so high that
the boats with sails hoisted, quickly went out of sight. We travelled on till evening, and
struck a large bayou, which we could not cross, and took the backward course till we
encamped within a mile of the spot where we had stayed the night before. The next
morning we struck off from the river into the prairie, and took the best course we could,
to reach the boats. Seven days elapsed, however, before we overtook them. The wind
blew a strong breeze, and drove the boats along very rapidly. We killed another elk and
some small game, which subsisted us till the fifth day, when our amunition gave out.
Our moccasins being worn out, fell off and our feet were perfectly cut up by the prickly
pear, which abounds on these prairies. At last, nearly famished and worn down, sore,
lame and exhausted, we found the boats. My crew had, in vain, requested leave to wait
for us, and we might have perished before the bourgeoise would have slackened their
speed in the least, on our account. We had a narrow escape from starvation in this
excursion and I was ever afterwards careful to have plenty of amunition with me when I
went out — as I frequently did — on similar expeditions.

In two days after this event, we arrived at the country of the Rickarees. On approaching
their village, we took precautions against an attack. A guard marched along the shore,
opposite to the boats, well armed. My crew composed a part of this force. When within
half a mile of the village we drew up the cannon and prepared to encamp. The whole
village came out in a body, as it seemed, to met us. They had not come far toward us
when an old chief rode out at full speed and with violent gestures and exclamations,
warned and motioned back his countrymen from before our cannon. The event of the
year before was fresh in his recollection. He supposed we were about to inflict a proper
and deserved punishment for the attack on Capt. Prior's troops and the murder of eight
or ten of them, the year before. This old chief drove back all who were coming out to
meet us. Choteau then sent for the chief to come down to his camp and hold a council.
They refused to comply with this request and appeared very suspicious of our designs.
After further negotiation, they agreed to come to us and hold a council if the company's
force would lay aside their arms and turn the cannon in the opposite direction. This was
agreed to by the company, with the provision that a guard should be on the ground,
armed, during the conference. The council was held, and Choteau harangued them on
the crime committed against the government the year before. They promised better
conduct for the future, but made no reparation or apology even, for the past. In a few
days we started forward through a country marked by the same general features as that
described before. Thousands of buffaloe cover the prairies on both sides of the river,
making them black as far as the eye could reach. In ten or twelve days the boats
reached the Mandan village, where I was awaiting them. I had sallied out five days
before in a hunting excursion, and arrived at the village of the Mandans in advance of
the boats. These are a poor, thieving, spiritless tribe, tributary to the Gros-Ventres, who
inhabit the country above them on the river. The village is on the north side of the river.
The boats came up on the opposite shore. The wind, as they arrived, blew a hurricane
and lashed the waves to a prodigious height. The Indians saw their chief, Shehaka, on
our boats, and were almost frantic with joy and eagerness to speak with him. They have
a round canoe made of hoops fastened together and a buffalo's skin stretched over
them, very light and portable. With these they rowed themselves across the turbulent
river, one moment lost from view between the waves, and the next, riding over them like
corks. In these tubs of canoes they crossed the stream to our boats. The natives made
a jubilee and celebration for the return of Shehaka and neglected every thing and every
body else. They hardly saw or took the least notice of their white visitors. The partners
distributed the presents sent by the government and we then made haste to leave this
boorish inhospitable tribe. We ascended the Missouri to the village of the Gros-Ventres,
on the south side of the river, fifteen miles above that of the Mandans. Here we found a
far different race from the last; a manly, warlike and independent tribe, who might well
be called for their daring and enterprising qualities, the Gros-coeurs or big-hearts
instead of bigbellies. Here was our place of stopping for a short time, and of preparation
for the business which had brought us hither. On our arrival at their village, four or five
agents of the Hudson's Bay Company were among them, but immediately crossed the
river with their goods, and bore off to the north east. We suspected them of inciting the
Black Feet against us and many of our company attributed our subsequent misfortunes
to their hostility. We afterwards heard that a large army of these Indians were
encamped at the falls above. They traded regularly with the British traders and procured
of them their arms and amunition. We built a fort near the Gros-Ventre village, and
unloaded all the larger boats for the purpose of sending them back to the settlements.
Having now arrived at our destination and being near the beaver region, we, the
Americans, ten in number, requested the partners to furnish out traps, amunition, guns
and men, according to contract. But this, they seemed to have forgotten entirely, or
intended never to fulfil. We found ourselves taken in, cheated chizzled, gulfed and
swindled in a style that has not, perhaps, been excelled by Yankees or French, or men
of any other nation, at any time in the thirty-six years that have passed over my head
since this feat was performed. A stock of old and worthless traps had been brought up
the river, apparently to be put off on the Americans. They offered us these traps, which
we refused to take. They then endeavored to deprive us of the arms and amunition
belonging to them, in our possession, and they succeeded in getting from most of us all
the guns and powder of theirs that we had. Mine were taken from me with the others, by
order of the partners. I do not know that all of them consented to this nefarious
proceeding; I hope and should have expected that several of them would not sanction
such conduct. But I heard of no protest or opposition to the acts of the majority, who
behaved toward us with a want of principle and of honor that would shame most
gentleman robbers of the highway. They seemed determined to turn us out on the
prairie and among the Indians, without arms, provisions or amunition. Our situation in
that event, would have nearly realized the one implied in the popular expression "a cat
in hell without claws." We were kept waiting two or three weeks without employment or
any provisions, except what we purchased at most exhorbitant prices. We bought
goods, knives, &c. of the company, on credit, and sold them to the Indians for
provisions and in this way were rapidly running in debt, which the company expected us
to discharge to them in beaver fur. Their object was to make the most out of us without
regard to their previous professions and promises. Finding myself, like most of my
comrades, destitute of all means of support and sustenance, of defense and offense, I
looked around for something by which I could live in that wild region. On Arriving at the
Gros-Ventre village we had found a hunter and trapper named Colter, who had been
one of Lewis & Clarke's men, and had returned thus far with them in 1807. Of him I
purchased a set of beaver traps for $120, a pound and a half of powder for $6, and a
gun for $40. Seeing me thus equipped, Liza, the most active, the meanest and most
rascally of the whole, offered me new and good traps, a gun and amunition. I told him
he appeared willing enough to help when help was not needed, and after I was
provided at my own expense. I then selected two companions, Miller and McDaniel,
who had been imposed on by the bourgeoise in the same manner with myself, and in
their company I prepared to begin business. These two had, by good fortune bought
with them six traps, two guns and amunition of their own. We cut down a tree and of the
trunk made a canoe in which we prepared to ascend to the "Forks" and head waters of
the Missouri and the mountains. We were young, and sanguine of success. No fears of
the future clouded our prospects and the adventures that lay before us excited our
hopes and fancies to the highest pitch. "No dangers daunted and no labors tired us."
Before leaving the Fort and my old companions, I will relate a characteristic anecdote of
Cheek, who so soon after this, expiated his follies by a violent death. In an early part of
the voyage, when coming up the river, about two months before, I had sent Cheek to
draw our share of provisions from the provision boat. Francois Ried, who dealt them out
for the company, offered Cheek a bear's head, saying it was good enough for "you
fellows," by this meaning the Americans. Cheek returned to his boat in great rage at the
insult, as he deemed it, and threatened to whip him (Ried) for the said contumely on
himself and fellow companions, as soon as he was out of Government employ — that is,
as soon as we had delivered up Shehaka to the Mandans. The matter passed on and I
supposed was forgotten by Cheek himself, until the Fort was built, and the Americans
were about separating with many grievances unredressed and wrongs unavenged.
Cheek meeting Ried one morning on the bank of the river, told him that he had
promised to whip him and that he could not break his word on any account. He
thereupon struck at the audacious Frenchman, who had presumed to call Americans
"fellows," and offer them a bear's head. Ried saved himself by running aboard one of
the boats, where he obtained a reinforcement. Cheek beat a retreat, and a truce was
observed by both parties till night fall. I had encamped with Cheek and two others, a
few hundred yards above the Fort. We were all, except Cheek, in the tent, about nine
o'clock in the evening, when Ried with a company, all armed with pistols and dirks
came up and demanded to see Cheek, saying that he had attacked him within the lines
of the Fort, when he knew he could not fight without violating orders. I told him that
Cheek was not in the tent. "He is hid, the cowardly rascal," cried Ried, and went to
searching the bushes. After he and his company were gone, I found Cheek at Major
Henry's tent, amusing himself with cards and wine. I took him with me to our own tent,
fearing that Ried's company might kill him if they found him that night. He was silent
while hearing my account and for some minutes after entering our tent. He then spoke
as if on maturest reflection, and said that he had intended to have let Ried go, with what
he had got, "but now I will whip him in the morning if I lose my life by it." In the morning
he started unarmed and wrapped in his blanket for the Fort. I with a few others followed
to see fair play which is ever a jewel with the American. Cheek soon found Ried and
accosted him in front of the Fort, by informing him that he had came down to
accommodate him with the interview which he had understood had been sought for, so
anxiously the night before. Ried said he was in liquor the night before — wanted to have
nothing to do with him and began to make for the Fort. "You must catch a little anyhow"
said Cheek, and springing towards Ried like a wild cat, with one blow he felled him to
the earth. Capt. Chouteau who had seen the whole proceeding from the Fort,
immediately rushed out with about thirty of his men all armed. "Bring out the irons, seize
him, seize him," cried Chouteau, frantic with passion, and raging like a mad bull. Cheek
prudently retired to our company on the bank of the river, a short distance, and said he
would die rather than be ironed. We were ready to stand by him to the last. Chouteau
now ordered his men to fire on us and the next moment would have seen blood-shed
and the death of some of us, had not L'Abbadieu, Valle, Menard, Morrison, Henry and
one of Chouteau's sons thrown themselves between us and the opposite party and thus
preventing the execution of Chouteau's order. Him they forced back, struggling like a
mad child in its mothers arms into the Fort. On the next day after this fracas, Miller,
McDaniel and myself parted from our companions after agreeing to meet them again on
the Forks or head-waters of the Missouri and started in our canoe up the river. The river
is very crooked in this part and much narrower than we had found it below. We came to
a Mandan village on the south side of the stream on the day of our departure from the
Fort. On arriving here, we were on the north side of the river, and on account of the
violence of the wind, did not cross to the village. Late in the evening a woman in
attempting to cross in a skin canoe, was overset in the middle of the river. She was
seen from the village, and immediately, a multitude of men rushed into the water and
seemed to run rather than swim to the woman whom they rescued from the water with
wonderful rapidity. Their dexterity in swimming was truly astonishing to us. We pushed
or rather paddled on in a shower of rain, till late that night and encamped. In the
morning we went on in a snowstorm and in four days the ice floating in the river,
prevented further navigation of the stream with the canoe. We stopped on the south
side of the river, built a small cabin, banked it round with earth and soon made
ourselves quite comfortable. This was in the month of November. We had caught a few
beaver skins in our route from the Gros-Ventre village, and were employed ourselves in
making moccasins and leggins and in killing game which was very plenty all around us.
Here we determined to pass the winter and in the Spring continue our ascent of the
Missouri to the Forks. On Christmas day I froze my feet and became so disabled as to
be confined to the house unable to walk. Miller and McDaniel soon after started back
for the Fort, with our stock of beaver skins to exchange them for ammunition. They
were gone twice the length of time agreed on for their stay. I began to consume the last
of my rations and should have suffered for food, had not a company of friendly Indians
called at the cabin and bartered provisions for trinkets and tobacco. My next visitors
were two Canadians and an American named Ayers, from the Fort, who were going on
with despatches for the main company, that was supposed to be at Manual's Fort at the
mouth of the Big Horn, a branch of the Yellow Stone. These men informed me that
Miller and McDaniel had changed their mind; that they did not intend to continue further
up the river and seemed to be in no haste to return to me. They urged me to
accompany them, and promised me the use of one of their horses till my feet should
become well enough for me to walk. I consented to go with them and prepared to leave
my cabin. Before doing so, I buried the traps and other accoutrements of my two former
companions in a corner of the lodge, and pealing off the bark from a log above them, I
wrote on it, "In this corner your things lie" I learned on my return in the Spring that both
of them had been killed as was supposed by the Rickarees. Their guns, traps, &c., were
seen in the hands of some of that tribe; but they were never heard of afterwards.

On the third of February, 1810, eight months after my departure from St. Louis, I started
from my winter lodge; but I soon repented my undertaking. The horses were all too
weak to carry more than the load appropriated to them, and I was thus compelled to
walk. My feet became very sore and gave me great pain, while the crust on the snow
made the traveling of all of us, both slow and difficult. I suffered severely at starting but
gradually improved in strength and was able in a few days to keep up with less torture
to myself than at first. We ascended the south bank of the river till we struck the Little
Missouri a branch from the south. Here we found some Indians who advised us to keep
up the banks of this river for two days, and then turning northwardly, a half-days travel
would bring us to the Gunpowder river near its head: this is a branch of the Yellow
Stone. We travelled two days as directed and left the Little Missouri in search of the
river. We missed it entirely, on account of our traveling so much slower than the Indians
are accustomed to do. Over two day's travel was not greater than one of theirs. For five
days we kept our course to the north in an open plain, and in the heart of winter. The
cold was intense and the wind from the mountains most piercing. The snow blew
directly in our faces and ice was formed on our lips and eyebrows. In this high latitude
and in the open prairies in the vicinity of the mountains where we then were, the winters
are very cold. On the first night we were covered where we lay to the depth of three feet
by the snow. No game was to be seen and we were destitute of provisions. For five
days we tasted not a morsel of food, and not even the means of making a fire. We saw
not a mound or hill, tree or shrub, not a beast nor a bird until the fifth day when we
discried afar off a high mound. We were destitute, alone in that vast desolate and to us
limitless expanse, of drifting snow, which the winds drove into our faces and heaped
around our steps. Snow was our only food and drink, and snow made our covering at
night. We suffered dreadfully from hunger. On the first and second days after leaving
the Little Missouri for the desert we were now traversing, our appetites were sharper
and the pangs of hunger more intense than afterwards. A languor and faintness
succeeded which made travelling most laborious and painful. On the fifth day we had
lost so much of strength and felt such weakness for want of food, that the most terrible
of deaths, a death by famine, stared us in the face. The pangs and miseries we
endured are vividly described by Mr. Kendall, from actual experience in his "Santa Fe
Expedition." My feet, in addition to all other sufferings, now became sore and more
painful than ever. The men had made for me a moccasin of skin taken from the legs of
a buffalo, and which I wore with the hair next my feet and legs. I felt the blood gurgling
and bubbling in this casing at every step. We were about to ward off starvation by killing
a horse, and eating the raw flesh and blood, when on the fifth day of our wandering in
this wilderness a mound was seen, as above mentioned, in the distance. We reached
and ascended it in the evening, whence we saw woods and buffaloes before us. We
hastened to kill several of these noblest of all animals of game, and encamped in the
woods, where we quickly made a fire and cut up the meat. We were all so voracious in
our appetites, as not to wait for the cooking, but ate great quantities nearly raw. The first
taste, stimulated our languor and appetites to an ungovernable pitch. We ate and ate
and ate, as if there were no limit to our capacity, and no quantity could satisfy us. At
length when gorged to the full and utterly unable to hold any more, we gave out and
sought repose about midnight under our tents. But sleep fled from our eyes and in the
morning we arose, without having rested, feverish and more fatigued than when we
supped and retired the night before. Our feet, limbs and bodies were swollen and
bloated, and we all found ourselves laid up on the sick list, by our debauch on buffaloe
meat. We had no desire to eat again on that day, and remained in camp utterly unable
to travel, till the next morning, when we started forward, travelling slowly. We soon
struck the river which we had suffered so much in seeking, and bent our course up the
stream, crossing its bends on the ice. On one occasion when saving distance by cutting
off a bend of the river, the horse carrying my pack and worldly goods, fell into an air
hole and would have instantly disappeared had I not caught him by the tail and dragged
him out to some distance, with a risk to myself of plunging under the ice into a rapid
current, that made me shudder the moment I coolly looked at the danger. Hair breadth
escapes from death are so frequent in the life of a hunter in this wild region as to lose
all novelty and may seem unworthy of mention. I shall relate a few as I proceed, for the
purpose of strewing the slight tenure the pioneer holds of life. And yet Boone, the prince
of the prairies, "lived hunting up to ninety." Perhaps pure air and continual exercise are
more than a counterbalance toward a long life, against all the dangers of a hunters and
trappers existence, even among hostile savages, such as we were now rapidly
approaching.

We continued our course up the Yellow Stone, gradually recovering from the effects of
our unnatural surfeit and gross gormandizing of buffalo meat. The country here is one
immense, level plain, and abounded, at this time, with large herds of buffalo, which
subsisted on the buds of trees and the grass which the powerful winds laid bare of
snow in many places. The river was skirted on either side by woods. At last, after fifteen
days of painful travel and much suffering, we reached "Manuel's Fort," at the mouth of
the Big Horn, where I found the most of my crew, and a small detachment of the
company's men from whom I had parted the previous fall. This Fort, as before
mentioned, was built by Liza in the spring of 1808, and a small garrison left in it, who
had remained there ever since. Here I found Cheek, Brown, Dougherty and the rest of
my crew rejoicing to see me. I was not a little surprised to find Col. Pierre Menard in
command, who was to have returned to St. Louis from the Fort at the Gros Ventre
village, and Liza intended to take command of the party on the head waters of the
Missouri. Such was the arrangement at the commencement of the voyage. I soon
learned from the men what they supposed to be the cause of the change. The next day
after I had left the Fort on the Missouri, in the fall, Cheek and several Americans were
in the office or marque of the company, endeavoring to get their equipments
according
to contract. Liza was present. Chouteau's name was mentioned in the course of the
conversation, when Cheek cooly remarked that if he caught Chouteau a hundred yards
from camp he would shoot him. "Cheek! Cheek!!" exclaimed Liza, "mind what you say."
"I do that," said Cheek, "and Liza, I have heard some of our boys say that if they ever
caught you two hundred yards from camp they would shoot you, and if they don't I will.
You ought not to expect any thing better from the Americans after having treated them
with so much meanness, treachery and cruelty as you have. Now Liza," continued he,
"you are going to the forks of the Missouri, mark my words, you will never come back
alive." Liza's cheeks blanched at this bold and reckless speech from a man who always
performed his promises, whether good or evil. He returned to St. Louis and sent up Col.
Menard's in his place. Col. M. was an honorable, high minded gentleman and enjoyed
our esteem in a higher degree than any other at the company. Liza we thoroughly
detested and despised, both for his acts and his reputation. There were many tales
afloat concerning villainies said to have been perpetrated by him on the frontiers. These
may have been wholly false or greatly exaggerated, but in his looks there was no
deception. Rascality sat on every feature of his dark complexioned, Mexican
face — gleamed from his black, Spanish, eyes, and seemed enthroned in a forehead
"villainous low." We were glad to be relieved of his presence. After remaining at this
Fort or camp a few days we started westward for the "Forks" and mountains in a
company of thirty-two men, French and Americans. On first arriving at the Fort I had
learned that two of the men with an Indian chief of the Snake tribe and his two wives
and a son had gone forward, with the intention of killing game for our company and
awaiting our approach on the route. Our second day's journey brought us to an Indian
lodge; stripped, and near by, we saw a woman and boy lying on the ground, with their
heads split open, evidently by a tomahawk. These were the Snake's elder wife and son,
he having saved himself and his younger wife by flight on horseback. Our two men who
had started out in company with him, were not molested. They told us that a party of
Gros Ventres had come upon them, committed these murders, and passed on as if
engaged in a lawful and praiseworthy business. These last were the most powerful and
warlike Indians of that region. The poor Snake tribe, on the contrary, were the weakest,
and consequently became the prey and victims of the others. They inhabit the caves
and chasms of the mountains and live a miserable and precarious life in eluding the
pursuit of enemies. All the neighboring tribes were at war with these poor devils. Every
party we met pretended to be out on an expedition against the Snakes, when they
frequently reduce to slavery. Thus the strong prey upon the weak in savage as well as
civilized life.

Our course now lay to the north-west for the Forks of the Missouri, which meet in
latitude — — among the mountains, whence the last named river runs directly north as
high as latitude — — miles, where it turns to the south and south east, which last course
it generally holds to its junction with the Mississippi. On the evening of the day when we
left Manuel's Fort, my friend Brown became blind from the reflection of the sun on the
snow; his eyes pained him so much that he implored us to put an end to his torment by
shooting him. I watched him during that night for fear he would commit the act himself.
He complained that his eye balls had bursted, and moaned and groaned most
piteously. In the morning, I opened the swollen lids, and informed him to his great joy
that the balls were whole and sound. He could now distinguish a faint glimmering of
light. I led him all that day and the next, on the third he had so far recovered that he
could see, though but indistinctly. Our guide on this route was Colter, who thoroughly
knew the road, having twice escaped over it from capture and death at the hands of the
Indians. In ten or twelve days after leaving the Fort we reentered an opening or gap in
the mountains, where it commenced snowing most violently and so continued all night.
The morning showed us the heads and backs of our horses just visible above the snow
which had crushed down all our tents. We proceeded on with the greatest difficulty. As
we entered the ravine or opening of the mountain the snow greatly increased in depth
being in places from fifty to sixty feet on the ground, a third of which had fallen and
drifted in that night. The wind had heaped it up in many places to a prodigious height.
The strongest horses took the front to make a road for us, but soon gave out and the
ablest bodied men took their places as pioneers. A horse occasionally stepped out of
the beaten track and sunk entirely out of sight in the snow. By night we had made about
four miles for that day's travel. By that night we passed the ravine and reached the
Gallatin river, being the eastern fork of the Missouri. The river sweeps rapidly by the
pass at its western extremity, on each side of which the mountain rises perpendicularly
from the bank of the river; and apparently stopped our progress up and down the east
side of the stream. I forded it and was followed by Dougherty, Ware, and another, when
Colter discovered an opening through the mountain on the right or north side, and
through it led the rest of the company. We, however, proceeded down the left bank of
the river till night, when we encamped and supped (four of us) on a piece of buffalo
meat about the size of the two hands. During this and the proceeding day we suffered
from indistinct vision, similar to Brown's affliction of leaving the Big Horn. We all now
became blind as he had been, from the reflection of the sun's rays on the snow. The
hot tears trickled from the swollen eyes nearly blistering the cheeks, and the eye-balls
seemed bursting from our heads. At first, the sight was obscured as by a silk veil or
handkerchief, and we were unable to hunt. Now we could not even see our way before
us, and in this dreadful situation we remained two days and nights. Hunger was again
inflicting its sharp pangs upon us, and we were upon the point of killing one of the pack
horses, when on the fourth day after crossing the Gallatin, one of the men killed a
goose, of which, being now somewhat recovered from our blindness, we made a soup
and stayed the gnawings of hunger. The next day our eyes were much better, and we
fortunately killed an elk, of which we ate without excess, being taught by experience,
the dangers of gluttony after a fast. We continued on down the river and soon came in
sight of our comrades in the main body on the right bank. They, like ourselves, had all
been blind, and had suffered more severely than we from the same causes. They had
killed three dogs, one a present to me from an Indian, and two horses to appease the
demands of hunger before they had sufficiently recovered to take sight on their guns.
Which in this distressed situation enveloped by thick darkness at midday, thirty Snake
Indians came among them, and left without committing any depredation. Brown and
another, who suffered less than the others, saw and counted these Indians, who might
have killed them all and escaped with their effects with perfect impunity. Their
preservation was wonderful. When we overtook them they were slowly recovering from
blindness and we all encamped together, with thankful and joyous hearts for our late
narrow escape from painful and lingering death. We proceeded on in better spirits. On
the next day we passed a battle field of the Indians, where the skulls and bones were
lying around on the ground in vast numbers. The battle which had caused this terrible
slaughter, took place in 1808, the year but one before, between the Black-Feet to the
number of fifteen hundred on the one side, and the Flat-Heads and Crows, numbering
together about eight hundred on the other. Colter was in the battle on the side of the
latter, and was wounded in the leg, and thus disabled from standing. He crawled to a
small thicket and there loaded and fired while sitting on the ground. The battle was
desperately fought on both sides, but victory remained with the weaker party. The
Black-Feet engaged at first with about five hundred Flat-Heads, whom they attacked in
great fury. The noise, shouts and firing brought a reinforcement of Crows to the Flat-Heads, who
were fighting with great spirit and defending the ground manfully. The
Black-Feet who are the Arabs of this region, were at length repulsed, but retired in
perfect order and could hardly be said to have been defeated. The Flat-Heads are a
noble race of men, brave, generous and hospitable. They might be called the Spartans
of Oregon. Lewis & Clark had received much kindness from them in their expedition to
the Columbia, which waters their country; and at the time of this well fought battle,
Colter was leading them to Manuel's Fort to trade with the Americans, when the Black
Feet fell upon them in such numbers as seemingly to make their destruction certain.
Their desperate courage saved them from a general massacre.

The following day we reached the long sought "Forks of the Missouri," or the place of
confluence of the Gallatin, Madison and Jefferson rivers. Here at last, after ten months
of travel, we encamped, commenced a Fort in the point made by the Madison and
Jefferson forks, and prepared to begin business. This point was the scene of Colter's
escape in the fall of the year but one before, from the Indians and a death by torture; an
event so extraordinary and thrilling, as he related it to me, that it deserves a brief
narration.

NOTE. — The following is the description given by G. W. KENDALL, of the sufferings
from starvation, referred to on the 19th page.

"For the first two days through which a strong and hearty man is doomed to exist upon
nothing, his sufferings are, perhaps, more acute than in the remaining stages. He feels
an inordinate, unappeasable, craving at the stomach, night and day. The mind runs
upon beef, bread and other substantials; but still in a great measure, the body retains
its strength. On the third and fourth days, but especially on the fourth, this incessant
craving gives place to a sinking and weakness of the stomach, accompanied by
nausea. The unfortunate sufferer still desires food, but with loss of strength he loses
that eager craving which is felt in the earlier stages. Should he chance to obtain a
morsel or two of food, as was occasionally the case with us, he swallows it with a
wolfish avidity; but five minutes afterwards his sufferings are more intense than ever.
He feels as if he had swallowed a living lobster, which is clawing and feeding upon the
very foundations of his existence. On the fifth day his cheeks suddenly appear hollow
and sunken, his body attenuated, his color an ashy pale, and his eye wild, glassy,
cannibalish. The different parts of the system now wage war with each other. The
stomach calls upon the legs to go with it, in quest of food: the legs from very weakness
refuse. The sixth day brings with it incessant suffering, although the pangs of hunger
are lost in an overpowering langor and sickness. The head becomes giddy — the ghosts
of well remembered dinners pass in hideous procession through the mind. The seventh
day comes bringing in train lassitude and further prostration of the system. The arms
hang listlessly, the legs drag heavily. The desire for food is still left, to a degree, but it
must be brought, not sought. The miserable remnant of life which still hangs to the
sufferer is a burden almost too grievous to be borne, yet his inherent love of existence
induces a desire still to preserve it, if it can be saved without a tax upon bodily exertion.
The mind wanders. At one moment he thinks his weary limbs cannot sustain him a
mile — the next he is endowed with unnatural strength and if there be a certainty of relief
before him, dashes bravely and strongly onward, wondering where proceeds this new
and sudden impulse. Farther than this my experience runneth not." — Vol. I. P. 266. The
whole of the company — ninety eight men — subsisted for thirteen days on what was
"really not provisions enough for three, and then came upon a herd of 17000 sheep,
about eighty miles south east of Santa fe. Here a scene of feasting ensued which
beggars description. * * * Our men abandoned themselves at once to
eating — perhaps I
should rather call it gormandizing or stuffing. * * * Had the food been any
thing but
mutton, and had we not procured an ample supply of salt from the Mexicans to season
it, our men might have died of the surfeit." — p. 265.

This lively writer, Geo. W. Kendall, has told a tale in the book just quoted, of prairie life
and adventures as well as of Mexican barbarity and treachery, and his embellished his
story with all the graces of style and description calculated to render it a work of
enduring interest.

Chapter II

Colter's Race and escapes — Separation for trapping — Descent of the Missouri — A fine
Landscape — Bad luck — Alarm from Indians — Retreat to the Fort — Death of
Cheek — Pursuit of the Indians — Return — The White Bears — Incidents of
hunting — Return to the Twenty Five Yard river — A party of Gros Ventres — Suspected
Robbery — Interview with the Crows — Rapid crossing of the Yellow Stone — Descent to
the Fort and the "Cache" — Robbery made certain — Passage to the Missouri — Indian
character and customs — A Spree, ending almost tragically — Generosity of the
Company — Settlement with them — A sage reflection.

WHEN COLTER was resuming in 1807 with Lewis & Clark, from Oregon, he met a
company of hunters ascending the Missouri, by whom he was persuaded to return to
the trapping region, to hunt and trap with them. Here he was found by Liza in the
following year, whom he assisted in building the Fort at the Big Horn. In one of his many
excursions from this post to the Forks of the Missouri, for beaver, he made the
wonderful escape adverted to in the last chapter and which I give precisely as he
related it to me. His veracity was never questioned among us and his character was
that of a true American backwoodsman. He was about thirty-five years of age, five feet
ten inches in height and wore an open, ingenious, and pleasing countenance of the
Daniel Boone stamp. Nature had formed him, like Boone, for hardy endurance of
fatigue, privations and perils. He had gone with a companion named Potts to the
Jefferson river, which is the most western of the three Forks, and runs near the base of
the mountains. They were both proceeding up the river in search of beaver, each in his
own canoe, when a war party of about eight hundred Black-Feet Indians suddenly
appeared on the east bank of the river. The Chiefs ordered them to come ashore, and
apprehending robbery only, and knowing the utter hopelessness of flight and having
dropped his traps over the side of the canoe from the Indians, into the water, which was
here quite shallow, he hastened to obey their mandate. On reaching the shore, he was
seized, disarmed and stripped entirely naked. Potts was still in his canoe in the middle
of the stream, where he remained stationary, watching the result. Colter requested him
to come ashore, which he refused to do, saying he might as well lose his life at once, as
be stripped and robbed in the manner Colter had been. An Indian immediately fired and
shot him about the hip; he dropped down in the canoe, but instantly rose with his rifle in
his hands. "Are you hurt," said Colter. "Yes, said he, too much hurt to escape; if you
can get away do so. I will kill at least one of them." He leveled his rifle and shot an
Indian dead. In an instant, at least a hundred bullets pierced his body and as many
savages rushed into the stream and pulled the canoe, containing his riddled corpse,
ashore. They dragged the body up onto the bank, and with their hatchets and knives
cut and hacked it all to pieces, and limb from limb. The entrails, heart, lungs, &c., they
threw into Colter's face. The relations of the killed Indian were furious with rage and
struggled, with tomahawk in hand, to reach Colter, while others held them back. He was
every moment expecting the death blow or the fatal shot that should lay him beside his
companion. A council was hastily held over him and his fate quickly determined upon.
He expected to die by tomahawk, slow, lingering and horrible. But they had
magnanimously determined to give him a chance, though a slight one, for his life. After
the council, a Chief pointed to the prairie and motioned him away with his hand, saying
in the Crow language, "go — go away." He supposed they intended to shoot him as soon
as he was out of the crowd and presented a fair mark to their guns. He started in a
walk, and an old Indian with impatient signs and exclamations, told him to go faster,
and as he still kept a walk, the same Indian manifested his wishes by still more violent
gestures and adjurations. When he had gone a distance of eighty or a hundred yards
from the army of his enemies, he saw the younger Indians throwing off their blankets,
leggings, and other incumbrances, as if for a race. Now he knew their object. He was to
run a race, of which the prize was to be his own life and scalp. Off he started with the
speed of the wind. The war-whoop and yell immediately arose behind him; and looking
back, he saw a large company of young warriors, with spears, in rapid pursuit. He ran
with all the strength that nature, excited to the utmost, could give; fear and hope lent a
supernatural vigor to his limbs and the rapidity of his flight astonished himself. The
Madison Fork lay directly before him, five miles from his starting place. He had run half
the distance when his strength began to fail and the blood to gush from his nostrils. At
every leap the red stream spurted before him, and his limbs were growing rapidly
weaker and weaker. He stopped and looked back; he had far outstripped all his
pursuers and could get off if strength would only hold out. One solitary Indian, far ahead
of the others, was rapidly approaching, with a spear in his right hand, and a blanket
streaming behind from his left hand and shoulder. Despairing of escape, Colter awaited
his pursuer and called to him in the Crow language, to save his life. The savage did not
seem to hear him, but letting go his blanket, and seizing his spear with both hands, he
rushed at Colter, naked and defenseless as he stood before him and made a desperate
lunge to transfix him. Colter seized the spear, near the head, with his right hand, and
exerting his whole strength, aided by the weight of the falling Indian, who had lost his
balance in the fury of the onset, he broke off the iron head or blade which remained in
his hand, while the savage fell to the ground and lay prostrate and disarmed before
him. Now was his turn to beg for his life, which he did in the Crow language, and held
up his hands imploringly, but Colter was not in a mood to remember the golden rule,
and pinned his adversary through the body to the earth one stab with the spear head.
He quickly drew the weapon from the body of the now dying Indian, and seizing his
blanket as lawful spoil, he again set out with renewed strength, feeling, he said to me,
as if he had not run a mile. A shout and yell arose from the pursuing army in his rear as
from a legion of devils, and he saw the prairie behind him covered with Indians in full
and rapid chase. Before him, if any where was life and safety; behind him certain death;
and running as never man before sped the foot, except, perhaps, at the Olympic
Games, he reached his goal, the Madison river and the end of his five mile heat.
Dashing through the willows on the bank he plunged into the stream and saw close
beside him a beaver house, standing like a coal-pit about ten feet above the surface of
the water, which was here of about the same depth. This presented to him a refuge
from his ferocious enemies of which he immediately availed himself. Diving under the
water he arose into the beaver house, where he found a dry and comfortable resting
place on the upper floor or story of this singular structure. The Indians soon came up,
and in their search for him they stood upon the roof of his house of refuge, which he
expected every moment to hear them breaking open. He also feared that they would
set it on fire. After a diligent search on that side of the river, they crossed over, and in
about two hours returned again to his temporary habitation in which he was enjoying
bodily rest, though with much anxious foreboding. The beaver houses are divided into
two stories and will generally accommodate several men in a dry and comfortable
lodging. In this asylum Colter kept fast till night. The cries of his terrible enemies had
gradually died away, and all was still around him, when he ventured out of his hiding
place, by the same opening under the water by which he entered and which admits the
beavers to their building. He swam the river and hastened towards the mountain gap or
ravine, about thirty miles above on the river, through which our company passed in the
snow with so much difficulty. Fearing that the Indians might have guarded this pass,
which was the only outlet from the valley, and to avoid the danger of a surprise, Colter
ascended the almost perpendicular mountain before him, the tops and sides of which a
great way down, were covered with perpetual snow. He clambered up this fearful
ascent about four miles below the gap, holding on by the rocks, shrubs and branches of
trees, and by morning had reached the top. He lay there concealed all that day, and at
night proceeded on in the descent of the mountain, which he accomplished by dawn.
He now hastened on in the open plain towards Manuel's Fort on the Big Horn, about
three hundred miles a headin the north-east. He travelled day and night, stopping only
for necessary repose, and eating roots and the bark of trees for eleven days. He
reached the Fort, nearly exhausted by hunger, fatigue and excitement. His only clothing
was the Indian's blanket, whom he had killed in the race, and his only weapon, the
same Indian's spear which he brought to the Fort as a trophy. His beard was long, his
face and whole body were thin and emaciated by hunger, and his limbs and feet
swollen and sore. The company at the Fort did not recognize him in this dismal plight
until he had made himself known. Colter now with me passed over the scene of his
capture and wonderful escape, and described his emotions during the whole adventure
with great minuteness. Not the least of his exploits was the scaling of the mountain,
which seemed to me impossible even by the mountain goat. As I looked at its rugged
and perpendicular sides I wondered how he ever reached the top — a feat probably
never performed before by mortal man. The whole affair is a fine example of the quick
and ready thoughtfulness and presence of mind in a desperate situation, and the power
of endurance, which characterise the western pioneer. As we passed over the ground
where Colter ran his race, and listened to his story an undefinable fear crept over all.
We felt awe-struck by the nameless and numerous dangers that evidently beset us on
every side. Even Cheek's courage sunk and his hitherto buoyant and cheerful spirit was
depressed at hearing of the perils of the place. He spoke despondingly and his mind
was uneasy, restless and fearful. "I am afraid," said he, "and I acknowledge it. I never
felt fear before but now I feel it." A melancholy that seemed like a presentiment of his
own fate, possessed him, and to us he was serious almost to sadness, until he met his
death a few days afterwards from the same Blackfeet from whom Colter escaped.
Colter told us the particulars of a second adventure which I will give to the reader. In the
winter when he had recovered from the fatigues of his long race and journey, he wished
to recover the traps which he had dropped into the Jefferson Fork on the first
appearance of the Indians who captured him. He supposed the Indians were all quiet in
winter quarters, and retraced his steps to the Gallatin Fork. He had just passed the
mountain gap, and encamped on the bank of the river for the night and kindled a fire to
cook his supper of buffalo meat when he heard the crackling of leaves and branches
behind him in the direction of the river. He could see nothing, it being quite dark, but
quickly he heard the cocking of guns and instantly leaped over the fire. Several shots
followed and bullets whistled around him, knocking the coals off his fire over the
ground. Again he fled for life, and the second time, ascended the perpendicular
mountain which he had gone up in his former flight fearing now as then, that the pass
might be guarded by Indians. He reached the top before morning and resting for the
day descended the next night, and then made his way with all possible speed, to the
Fort. He said that at the time, he promised God Almighty that he would never return to
this region again if he were only permitted to escape once more with his life. He did
escape once more, and was now again in the same country, courting the same
dangers, which he had so often braved, and that seemed to have for him a kind of
fascination. Such men, and there are thousands of such, can only live in a state of
excitement and constant action. Perils and danger are their natural element and their
familiarity with them and indifference to their fate, are well illustrated in these
adventures of Colter.

A few days afterward, when Cheek was killed and Colter had another narrow escape,
he came into the Fort, and said he had promised his Maker to leave the country, and
"now" said he, throwing down his hat on the ground, "If God will only forgive me this
time and let me off I will leave the country day after tomorrow — and be d — d if I ever
come into it again." He left accordingly, in company with young Bryant of Philadelphia,
whose father was a merchant of that city, and one other whose name I forget. They
were attacked by the Blackfeet just beyond the mountains, but escaped by hiding in a
thicket, where the Indians were afraid to follow them, and at night they proceeded
towards the Big Horn, lying concealed in the daytime. They reached St. Louis safely
and a few years after I heard of Colter's death by jaundice.

We arrived at the Forks of the Missouri on the third day of April, 1810, ten months after
leaving St. Louis and two months and one day after quitting my cabin above the Gros
Ventre village. We had now reached our place of business, trapping for beaver, and
prepared to set to work. Dougherty, Brown, Ware and myself agreed to trap in company
on the Missouri between the Forks and the Falls, which lie several hundred miles down
the river to the north, from the Forks. We made two canoes by hollowing out the trunks
of two trees and on the third or fourth day after our arrival at the Forks we were ready to
start on an expedition down the river. The rest of the Americans with a few French, in all
eighteen in number, determined to go up the Jefferson river for trapping, and the rest of
the company under Col. Menard remained to complete the Fort and trading house at
the Forks between the Jefferson and Madison rivers. On parting from Cheek, he said in
a melancholy tone, "James you are going down the Missouri, and it is the general
opinion that you will be killed. The Blackfeet are at the falls, encamped I hear, and we
fear you will never come back. But I am afraid for myself as well as you. I know not the
cause, but I have felt fear ever since I came to the Forks, and I never was afraid of
anything before. You may come out safe, and I may be killed. Then you will say, there
was Cheek afraid to go with us down the river for fear of death, and now he has found
his grave by going up the river. I may be dead when you return." His words made little
impression on me at the time, but his tragical end a few days afterwards recalled them
to my mind and stamped them on my memory forever. I endeavored to persuade him to
join our party, while he was equally urgent for me to join his, saying that if we went in
one company our force would afford more protection from Indians, than in small parties,
while I contended that the fewer our numbers the better would be our chance of
concealment and escape from any war parties that might be traversing the country. We
parted never to meet again, taking opposite directions and both of us going into the
midst of dangers. My company of four started down the river and caught some beaver
on the first day. On the second we passed a very high spur of the mountain on our
right. The mountains in sight on our left, were not so high as those to the east of us. On
the third day we issued from very high and desolate mountains on both sides of us,
whose tops are covered with snow throughout the year, and came upon a scene of
beauty and magnificence combined, unequalled by any other view of nature that I ever
beheld. It really realized all my conception of the Garden of Eden. In the west the peaks
and pinnacles of the Rocky Mountains shone resplendent in the sun. The snow on their
tops sent back a beautiful reflection of the rays of the morning sun. From the sides of
the dividing ridge between the waters of the Missouri and Columbia, there sloped
gradually down to the bank of the river we were on, a plain, then covered with every
variety of wild animals peculiar to this region, while on the east another plain arose by a
very gradual ascent, and extended as far as the eye could reach. These and the
mountain sides were dark with Buffalo, Elk, Deer, Moose, wild Goats and wild Sheep;
some grazing, some lying down under the trees and all enjoying a perfect millenium of
peace and quiet. On the margin the swan, geese, and pelicans, cropped the grass or
floated on the surface of the water. The cotton wood trees seemed to have been
planted by the hand of man on the bank of the river to shade our way, and the pines
and cedars waved their tall, majestic heads along the base and on the sides of the
mountains. The whole landscape was that of the most splendid English park. The
stillness, beauty and loveliness of this scene, stuck us all with indescribable emotions.
We rested on the oars and enjoyed the whole view in silent astonishment and
admiration. Nature seemed to have rested here, after creating the wild mountains and
chasms among which we had voyaged for two days. Dougherty, as if inspired by the
scene with the spirit of poetry and song, broke forth in one of Burns' noblest lyrics,
which found a deep echo in our hearts. We floated on till evening through this most
delightful country, when we stopped and prepared supper on the bank of the river. We
set our traps and before going to rest for the night we examined them and found a
beaver in every one, being twenty-three in all. In the evening we were nearly as
successful as before and were cheered with thoughts of making a speedy fortune. We
determined to remain in this second paradise as long as our pursuits would permit. We
skinned our beaver, ate breakfast and started to go further down the river in search of a
good camp ground. Brown and Dougherty started in a canoe, before Ware and I were
ready, and after going about two hundred yards, they struck a rock concealed under the
water, overturned the canoe, and lost all our skins and amunition except the little
powder in our horns and few skins left behind. They also lost their guns, but saved
themselves and the canoe. Ware and I soon followed them, and we all encamped at
the mouth of a small creek on the left side of the river. Here Ware and I remained while
the two others went back to the Fort to procure other guns and amunition, taking with
them one of our guns. They reached the Fort the first night, having saved a great
distance by crossing the country and cutting off the bend of the river which here makes
a large sweep to the east. They went up on the west side or that next to the mountains,
waded Jefferson's Fork and entered the Fort late at night. Early the next morning the
whole garrison was aroused by an alarm made by Valle and several Frenchmen who
came in, as if pursued by enemies, and informed them that the whole party who had
gone up the Jefferson, at the time of our departure down the Missouri, had been killed
by the Indians, and that they expected an immediate attack on the Fort. The whole
garrison prepared for resistance. The next morning after Valle's arrival, Colter came in
unhurt, with a few others, and said there were no Indians near the Fort. Col. Menard
despatched Dougherty and Brown, on the same day, to us with the request that we
should hasten to the Fort to assist in its defense. Being well mounted, they came up to
our camp as we were preparing dinner. Their faces were pale with fright, and in great
trepidation they told us they had seen Indian "signs" on the route from the Fort — that a
horse with a rope about his neck had run up and snuffed around them as if in search of
his master, and then disappeared — that an Indian dog had performed the same action.
Every thing indicated that Indians were near, and we hastened to depart for the Fort.
We proceeded up the creek near whose mouth we had encamped, and were screened
from view on the north by the willows on our right. We had gone very cautiously four
miles, when we left the river, and I perceived a small herd of buffalo in the creek bottom
far to our right, start bounding off as if from pursuers in the rear, and immediately after,
I descried through an opening in the willows, eight Indians, walking rapidly across the
plain in the direction of our late camp. I informed the others of my observation, and
Ware horror stricken proposed immediate flight. I protested against this course and no
one seconded him, but we were all alarmed and the chins and lips of some quivered as
they spoke. I said that we could not all escape, having but two horses among us, that
we had, perhaps, seen the whole force of the Indians, and that they might not have
seen us at all; that we could fight eight with success. I proposed that if attacked we
should make a breast-work of our horses and two of us should fire upon them at a
hundred yards, that the other two should fire at fifty yards, that the reloaded guns
should despatch the third couple, and our knives and pistols finish the seventh and
eighth. This Bobadil proposition revived their spirits wonderfully, and they instantly
dismissed all thoughts of flight. Ware and I ascended a small height to watch the
Indians, while the rest went on with the horses, which travelled slowly with packs. Here
we saw the Indians go up to our deserted camp, the smoke from which had attracted
them thither. The smoke in this clear atmosphere is visible to a great distance. The
hunters said they had seen the smoke from an ordinary fire in the prairies for three
hundred miles. We proceeded without pursuit, and at two o'clock the next morning we
reached the Jefferson Fork, opposite the Fort. Unwilling to risk the danger of an attack
by delay we forded the river with great difficulty, and went towards the Fort, whence
some dogs rushed upon us, barking furiously. I spoke to the dogs, and a voice hailed
us from the Fort with "who's there"? I answered promptly, and thus saved ourselves
from a volley, for when we entered the Fort, the whole garrison was drawn up with
fingers upon triggers. They were expecting an attack every moment, and did not look
for us so soon. They were all in the greatest consternation. Lieutenant Emmel with
those before mentioned of the trapping party up the river, had come in and they
supposed that all the rest had been killed. They had had a very narrow escape
themselves, as all but Colter probably considered it; he with his large experience,
naturally looked upon the whole as an ordinary occurrence. During the day others came
in and we learned from them the extent of our losses. The company consisting of
eighteen, had proceeded up the bank of the Jefferson, trapping, and on the third day
had pitched their tents for the night, near the river, and about forty miles from the Fort.
Cheek, Hull and Ayers were employed in preparing the camp, while the rest had
dispersed in various directions to kill game, when some thirty or forty Indians appeared
on the prairie south of them, running a foot and on horses, toward the camp. Valle and
two men whose names I forget, came running up to Cheek and others and told them to
catch their horses and escape. This Cheek refused to do, but, seizing his rifle and
pistols, said he would stay and abide his fate. "My time has come, but I will kill at least
two of them, and then I don't care." His gloomy forebodings were about to be fulfilled
through his own recklessness and obstinacy. Ayers ran frantically about, paralysed by
fear and crying, "O God, O God, what can I do." Though a horse was within his reach
he was disabled by terror from mounting and saving his life. Courage and cowardice
met the same fate, though in very different manners. Hull stood coolly examining his
rifle as if for battle. The enemy were coming swiftly toward them, and Valle and his two
companions started off pursued by mounted Indians. The sharp reports of Cheek's rifle
and pistols were soon heard, doing the work of death upon the savages, and then a
volley of musketry sent the poor fellow to his long home.

Lieutenant Emmel and another came in from hunting, about dusk, ignorant of the fate of
their fellows, and seeing the tent gone they supposed the place of the camp had been
changed. Hearing a noise at the river, Emmel went down to the bank, whence he saw
through the willows, on the opposite side, a camp of thirty Indian lodges, a woman
coming down to the river with a brass kettle which he would have sworn was his own,
and also a white man bound by both arms to a tree. He could not recognise the
prisoner, but supposed he was an American. On returning to the place where Cheek
had pitched his tent, he saw his dead body without the scalp, lying where he had
bravely met his end. He then hastened to the Fort where his arrival has been noticed
before. A greater part of the garrison, with myself, started out on the morning of my
coming in to go in pursuit of the Indians, up the river, and to bury our dead. We found
and buried the corpses of our murdered comrades, Cheek and Ayers; the latter being
found in the river near the bank. Hull was never heard of, and two others, Rucker and
Fleehart were also missing; being killed or taken prisoners by the Indians. An Indian
was found dead, with two bullets in his body, supposed to be from Cheek's pistol. The
body was carefully concealed under leaves and earth, and surrounded by logs. We
followed the trail of the savages for two days when we missed it and gave up the chase.
Many of the men wished to pursue them into the mountains, but Col. Menard judged it
imprudent to go further in search of them, as we should, probably, come upon an army
of which this party was but a detachment. He thought the main body was very large,
and not distant from us or the Fort, and therefore determined to return and await them
there. We accordingly retraced our steps to the Fort, and remained in it, with our whole
force, for several days, expecting an attack. No attack was made, however, nor did an
enemy make his appearance afterwards, except in the shape of white, grey, brown and
grizzly bears. Seeing nothing of our enemies, the Blackfeet, we soon became
emboldened and ventured out of the Fort to hunt and trap, to the distance of about six
miles. In these short expeditions the men had frequent encounters with bears, which in
this region are of enormous size, sometimes weighing 800 pounds each, and when
wounded, are the most terribly ferocious and dangerous to the hunter of all other
animals. The African Lion and Bengal Tiger are the only beasts of prey, that in ferocity
and power, can be compared with the Grey or Grizzly Bear of the Rocky Mountains.
These were the terrors of our men as much as were the Indians, and they usually
spoke of them both as equally terrible and equally to be avoided. The great strength of
the Bear, his swiftness and utter insensibility to danger when wounded, render him as
dangerous to the hunter as the Tiger or the Lion. The first shot is seldom fatal upon
him, on account of the thickness of his skin and skull, and the great quantity of fat and
flesh that envelope his heart, and make an almost impenetrable shield in front. I will
relate a few adventures with this North American king of beasts, and then proceed with
my narrative.

Ware, an American, was hunting on an island in the Madison river, a short distance
from the Fort and came suddenly, in a buffalo path, upon a white or grey Bear. He fired
at the monster, wounded him in the breast, and then ran for his life, with the Bear at his
heels, and saved himself by plunging into the river. His pursuer laid himself down on the
bank and in the last struggle of death, fell into the water, where he died. Ware drew him
out, took off the skin and was cutting and hanging up the meat, when he heard the
noise of another Bear in the thicket near by. He hastened to the Fort for assistance and
a party, with me, went over to the island. When there, we separated in our search, and
in beating about the bushes, I, with my dog, entered a narrow path, and had gone some
distance, when I saw the dog ahead, suddenly bristle up, bark and walk lightly as if
scenting danger. I called to the men to come up, and watched the dog. He soon found
the bear guarding a dead elk, which he and his dead companion had killed and covered
with leaves. As soon as he saw the dog he plunged at him, and came furiously toward
me, driving the dog before him and snorting and raging like a mad bull. I levelled my
gun and snapped, and then ran with the bear at my heels, and his hot breath upon me.
I reached the river bank, and turned short up a path, in which I met my companions
coming to my call. They, however, seeing me running, were panic stricken and took to
their heels also, thus were we all in full retreat from bruin, who crossed the river and
fled through the willows on the other side. We heard him crashing his way for many
hundred yards. On another occasion, a party had wounded a bear which instantly gave
chase and overtook a Shawnee Indian in the company named Luthecaw, who had
stumbled over some brush and fallen. He grasped the Indian by the double capeau and
coat collar and stood over him, while we fired six shots into the bear, which fell dead
upon the Indian, who cried out that the bear was crushing him to death, but arose
unhurt, as soon as we removed the tremendous weight of the dead monster from his
body. His jaws were firmly closed upon the Shawnee's "capeau" and coat collar, who
arose at last with "sacre moste, I'est crazy, monte" — "damn the bear, he almost
mashed me."

We kept the flag flying a month, frequently seeing Indians without getting an interview
with them; they always fleeing at our approach. We then pulled down the flag and
hoisted the scalp of the Indian whom Cheek had killed. By this time the Fort was
completed and put in a good state of defense. We subsisted ourselves in the
meantime, by hunting in small parties, which started out of Fort before day and went
some twenty or thirty miles, and after having killed a buffalo or elk, come back with the
meat loaded on the horses.

The Grizzly Bears frequently made their appearance and we killed great numbers of
them. A Yankee, named Pelton, was remarkable for his contracted, narrow eyes, which
resembled those of a bear. He was a jovial, popular fellow, and had greatly amused the
company in coming up the river, by his songs and sermons. At every stopping place he
held a meeting for the mock trial of offenders and exhorted us in the New England style
to mend our courses and eschew sin. He had an adventure with a bear, about this time,
which is worth relating. While trapping near the Fort with a small party, including myself,
he was watching his traps alone, a short distance from us, when he heard a rustling in
the bushes at his right, and before turning around he was attacked by a large bear,
which grasped him by the breast, bore him to the earth and stood over him with his
head back and eyes fixed on his face as if observing his features; Pelton screamed and
yelled in a most unearthly manner, and his new acquaintance, as if frightened by his
appearance and voice, leaped from over his body, stood and looked at him a moment,
over his shoulder, growled, and then walked off. We ran in the direction of the cries and
soon met Pelton coming towards us in a walk, grumbling and cursing, with his head
down, as if he had been disturbed in a comfortable sleep, and altogether wearing an air
of great dissatisfaction. He told us the story, and thought he owed his escape to his
bearish eyes which disconcerted his friendly relation in the act of making a dinner of
him.

The Indians, we thought, kept the game away from the vicinity of the Fort. Thus we
passed the time till the month of May, when a party of twenty-one, of whom I was one,
determined to go up the Jefferson river to trap. By keeping together we hoped to repel
any attack of the savages. We soon found the trapping in such numbers not very
profitable, and changed our plan by separating in companies of four, of whom, two men
would trap while two watched the camp. In this manner we were engaged, until the fear
of Indians began to wear off, and we all became more venturous. One of our company,
a Shawnee half-breed named Druyer, the principal hunter of Lewis & Clark's party, went
up the river one day and set his traps about a mile from the camp. In the morning he
returned alone and brought back six beavers. I warned him of his danger. "I am too
much of an Indian to be caught by Indians," said he. On the next day he repeated the
adventure and returned with the product of his traps, saying, "this is the way to catch
beavers." On the third morning he started again up the river to examine his traps, when
we advised him to wait for the whole party, which was about moving further up the
stream, and at the same time two other Shawnees left us against our advice, to kill
deer. We started forward in company, and soon found the dead bodies of the last
mentioned hunters, pierced with lances, arrows and bullets and lying near each other.
Further on, about one hundred and fifty yards, Druyer and his horse lay dead, the
former mangled in a horrible manner; his head was cut off, his entrails torn out and his
body hacked to pieces. We saw from the marks on the ground that he must have fought
in a circle on horseback, and probably killed some of his enemies, being a brave man,
and well armed with a rifle, pistol, knife and tomahawk. We pursued the trail of the
Indians till night, without overtaking them, and then returned, having buried our dead,
with saddened hearts to Fort.

Soon after this time, Marie and St. John, my two Canadian companions on the route
from my winter quarters on the Missouri to the Big Horn, came to the Fort at the Forks.
Marie's right eye was out and he carried the yet fresh marks of a horrible wound on his
head and under his jaw. After I had left them at the Big Horn to come to the Forks, they
came on to the Twenty-five Yard river, the most western branch of the Yellow Stone, for
the purpose of trapping. One morning after setting his traps, Marie strolled out into the
prairie for game, and soon perceived a large White Bear rolling on the ground in the
shade of a tree. Marie fired at and missed him. The bear snuffed around him without
rising, and did not see the hunter until he had re-loaded, fired again and wounded him.
His majesty instantly, with ears set back, flew towards his enemy like an arrow, who ran
for life, reached a beaver dam across the river, and seeing no escape by land, plunged
into the water above the dam. The Bear followed and soon proved himself as much
superior to his adversary in swimming as in running. Marie dove and swam under the
water as long as he could, when he rose to the surface near the Bear. He saved himself
by diving and swimming in this manner several times, but his enemy followed close
upon him and watched his motions with the sagacity which distinguishes these animals.
At last he came up from under the water, directly beneath the jaws of the monster,
which seized him by the head, the tushes piercing the scalp and neck under the right
jaw and crushing the ball of his right eye. In this situation with his head in the Bear's
mouth and he swimming with him ashore, St. John having heard his two shots in quick
succession, came running to his rescue. St. John levelled his rifle and shot the Bear in
the head, and then dragged out Marie from the water more dead than alive. I saw him
six days afterwards, with a swelling on his head an inch thick, and his food and drink
gushed through the opening under his jaw, made by the teeth of his terrible enemy.

We made frequent hunting excursions in small parties, in which nothing of
consequence occurred. Many of us had narrow escapes from Indians and still narrower
from the Grizzly and White Bears. Game became very scarce and our enemies seemed
bent upon starving us out. We all became tired of this kind of life, cooped up in a small
enclosure and in perpetual danger of assassination when outside the pickets. The
Blackfeet manifested so determined a hatred and jealousy of our presence, that we
could entertain no hope of successfully prosecuting our business, even if we could save
our lives, in their country. Discouraged by the prospect before us, most of the
Americans prepared to go back to the settlements, while Col. Henry and the greater
part of the company, with a few Americans were getting ready to cross the mountains
and go onto the Columbia beyond the vicinity of our enemies. A party which had been
left at Manuel's Fort, for the purpose, had brought up one of the boats and part of the
goods from the "cache'' on the Yellow Stone below the Fort, as far as Clark's river,
where, on account of the rapidity of the current, they had been compelled to leave
them. Thither Menard went with men and horses to get the goods for the trip to the
Columbia, and I accompanied him with most of the Americans on our way back to
civilized life and the enjoyments of home. When we reached the Twenty-five Yard river
we met one hundred and fifty Indians of the Gros Ventre tribe. One of the men
observing a new calico shirt belonging to him, around the neck of an Indian, informed
Menard of his suspicions that this party had robbed the "cache" (from the French,
cachee to hide, ) of the goods which they had hid in the earth near the bank of the
Yellow Stone, in the fall before. Menard questioned them, but they denied the theft,
saying they got the calico at the trading house. In the evening they entrenched
themselves behind breastworks of logs and brush, as if fearing an attack from us, and
in the morning, departed on an expedition against the snakes, of which miserable
nation, we heard afterwards, they killed and took for slaves, a large number. Thus the
whales of this wilderness destroy the minnows.

Here we made three canoes of buffalo bull's skins, by sewing together two skins, for
each canoe, and then stretching them over a frame similar in shape to a Mackinaw
boat. Our canoe contained three men, about sixty steel traps, five hundred beaver
skins, our guns and amunition, besides other commodities. Nine of us started down the
river in these canoes and in two days reached Clark's river where the boats with the
goods was awaiting us. The rest with the horses by land. Clark's river enters the Yellow
Stone from the south; near its mouth we found an army of the Crow nation encamped.
This is a wandering tribe like most of the Indians in this region, without any fixed
habitation. These were then at war with the Blackfeet, whom they were seeking to give
battle. Having remained with us a few days, they went off towards the south. One of our
hunters came into camp, on the evening of the day when they had departed, and
informed us of a large force of Indians about four miles to the north, stationed behind a
breast-work of rock and earth near a cliff. These were supposed to be Blackfeet, and
early in the morning, the land party with the horses, having arrived, we mustered our
whole force and went out to attack them in their entrenchment. We were all eager for
the fight, and advancing upon them in Indian style, we discovered instead of Blackfeet,
about a hundred warriors of the Crow nation, who had been out in an expedition against
the Blackfeet and had just returned. They were a detachment from the army which had
left us the day before. They marched into our camp on horse, two abreast, and there
learning from us the news of their comrades, they immediately crossed the river in
pursuit of them. Their manner of crossing the river was singular, and reminded me of
the roving Tartars. They stripped themselves entirely naked, and every ten piled their
accoutrements together, blankets, saddles, weapons, &c., on a tent skin made of
buffalo robes, and tying it up in a large round bundle, threw it into the river and plunged
after, some swimming with these huge heaps, floating like corks, and others riding the
horses or holding by the tails till they had all crossed the river. Arrived on the opposite
bank, which they reached in little less time than I have taken to describe their passage,
they dressed, mounted their horses, and marched off two and two, as before, and were
quickly out of our sight.

Here we parted from our companions, who were going to the Columbia, and who
returned hence to the Forks with the goods and amunition for their trip, while we, the
homeward bound, continued our course down the river in the canoes and the boat they
had left, to the Fort on the Big Horn. We remained here several days, repairing a keel
boat left by Manuel two years before, which we loaded with the goods from the canoes,
and then recommended our descent of the Yellow Stone with the canoes and two
boats. Col. Menard accompanied us in one of the boats, and I with two companions
kept to our canoe in advance of the others for the purpose of killing game. On reaching
the place "cacheing" the goods and leaving the boats, on account of the ice the year
before, Menard verified his suspicions of the Gros Ventres whom he met on the
Twenty-five Yard river. The pit containing the goods and effects of the men had been
opened and forty trunks robbed of their contents. Another pit containing the company's
goods had also been opened, and the most valuable of its store left by Menard was
taken off by the Gros Ventres. They had also cut up and nearly destroyed the boats.
We required one with the fragments of the other, and then passed down the river with
three boats. I kept ahead as before in my skin canoe. This river is very rapid throughout
its whole course, and very shallow. We were now near the Falls which are difficult and
dangerous of navigation. In the morning I killed two buffalos with my pistol and rifle, and
my two companions killed two more, which we up and stowed away. We approached
the Falls sooner than we expected, and were directing our course to the left side among
the sunken rocks and breakers, where we would certainly have been lost, when we
heard a gun behind and saw the men on the boats waving us with handkerchiefs to the
right. We were barely able to gain the channel, when the canoe shot down the descent
with wonderful rapidity. We flew along the water like a sledge down an icy hill. My two
companions lay in the bottom of the canoe, which frequently rebounded from the waves
made by the rocks under the water and stood nearly upright. The waves washed over
us and nearly filled the canoe with water. The boats behind commenced the descent
soon after we had ended it in safety. They several times struck and one of them hung
fast on a concealed rock. We hauled our canoe ashore, carried it above, and coming
down to the foundered boat and lighting it of part of its load, we got it off the rocks. We
now passed rapidly down to the Missouri river, where I left my friendly canoe and went
aboard one of the boats. Here my spirits were cheered with the near prospect of home.
I longed to see the familiar faces of kindred and friends with a yearning of the heart,
which few can realize who have not wandered as I had done, among savages and wild
beasts and made the earth my bed and the sky my canopy for more than a year. My
way homeward was clear and comparatively safe; the tribes along the river being
friendly, or if hostile, unable to annoy us as the Blackfeet had done so long in the
prairies.

In my wanderings in this expedition I saw much of the Indians and their manner of
living. Those in this region were then more savage, less degraded, and more virtuous
than they are at the present time. The white man and his "fire water" have sadly
demoralized them, thinned their numbers, and will soon sink them into oblivion. They
are no longer the proud, hauty, simple minded warriors and orators that I found so
many of them to be in 1809-10. Sunk in poverty and intemperance, they are fast
dwindling away. I have seen some of the finest specimens of men among our North
American Indians. I have seen Chiefs with the dignity of real Princes and the eloquence
of real orators, and Braves with the valor of the ancient Spartans. Their manner of
speaking is extremely dignified and energetic. They gesticulate with infinite grace,
freedom and animation. Their words flow deliberately, conveying their ideas with great
force and vividness of expression, deep into the hearts of their hearers. Among their
speakers I recognized all the essentials in manner of consumate orators. I shall have
occasion, in the following chapters to bring out some of their nobler qualities in bolder
relief than was possible in the preceding, on account of the more intimate relations I
afterwards formed with these children of nature and the prairies.

In five days after entering the Missouri, we descended to the Gros Ventre village and
our Fort, and were there joyfully received by our old companions. Whiskey flowed like
milk and honey in the land of Canaan, being sold to the men by the disinterested and
benevolent gentlemen of the Missouri Fur Company, for the moderate sum of twelve
dollars per gallon, they taking in payment, beaver skins at one dollar and a half, each,
which were worth in St. Louis, six. Their prices for every thing else were in about the
same proportion. Even at this price some of the men bought whiskey by the bucket full,
and drank.

'Till they forgot their loves and debts
And cared for grief na mair.

During the carousel an incident occurred that nearly brought ruin upon us all. Three
Shawnee Indians in the company from Kaskaskia, had started from the Upper Yellow
Stone in a skin canoe, in advance, and had arrived a day or two before us. In their way
down, one of them named Placota had wantonly killed a Crow Indian on the Yellow
Stone, and a Gros Ventre on the Missouri, about sixty miles above the village, and
taken their scalps. In his drunken fit Placota brought out one of these scalps in full view
of the friendly Gros Ventres. Menard caught it out of his hand and hid it from view. The
Indians became greatly excited, crowded around us and demanded to know whose
scalp it was. Menard then produced to them the scalp of the Indian whom Cheek had
killed and which they had seen before. They said this was a "dry" and the other a
"green" scalp. We at last, and with great difficulty, pacified them and quieted their
suspicions. Placota, who was raging mad, by Menard's orders was tied behind the
trading house till he became sober, when I released him on his promise of good
behavior.

This tribe was then very powerful, having in all five villages, and mustering, in case of
emergency, as many as three thousand warriors. I have already noticed their character
and warlike qualities. A singular custom prevails among them in cutting off a finger or
inflicting a severe wound in remembrance of any severe misfortune. Few of the men
thirty years of age, were without the marks of these wounds, made on the death of
some near relation or on occasion of a defeat of the nation in war. Some I saw with
three and one with four fingers cut off. I saw a young man bewailing the death of his
father in a battle with the Blackfeet. He had compelled his friends to draw leather cords
through the flesh under his arms and on his back, and attaching three Buffalo skulls,
weighing at least twenty-five pounds, to the ends of the cords he dragged them over the
ground after him through the village, moaning and lamenting in great distress. At their
meals, the Indians on the Missouri, throw the first piece of meat in the direction of an
absent friend. In smoking, they send the first whiff upwards in honor of the Great Spirit,
the second downward as a tribute to their great mother, the third to the right and the
fourth to the left, in thanks to the Great Spirit for the game. He sends them so
abundantly on the bosom of the earth. Their name for Chief is Inca, the same as that
of the South American and Mexican Indians. For knife they say messa; for horses,
cowalla. A comparison of their languages will show an identity in their origin and race.
They secure their dead by setting four poles, forked at the top, and about twenty five
feet in height, in the ground. On these they put a scaffold of buffalo skin, fastened to
the poles, and on this the corpse is placed, covered by a buffalo skin bound around it
very tightly. In this way the corpse is protected from the birds and beasts, and thus it
remains till the scaffold falls by decay. The bones are then gathered by the relatives
and put into a common heap. I saw in the rear of the Gros Ventre village an immense
extent of ground covered by these tombs in the air, and near by was a heap of skulls
and bones which had fallen to the earth from these air graves.

After a few day's stay at the Fort and village, we again started down the river with Col.
Menard and two boats. We arrived at St. Louis in the month of August, A. D. 1810,
without any occurrence of interest on the voyage. We never got our dues or any thing of
the least similitude to justice from the company. They brought me in their debt two
hundred dollars, and some of the other Americans, for still larger sums. The reader may
ask how this could be. He can easily imagine the process when he is told that the
company charged us six dollars per pound for powder, three dollars for lead, six dollars
for coarse calico shirts, one dollar and a half per yard for coarse tow linen for tents, the
same for a common butcher knife, and so on, and allowed us only what I have
mentioned for our beaver skins, our only means of payment. Capt. Lewis told me not to
lay in any supplies in St. Louis, as the Company had plenty and could sell them to me
as cheaply as I could get them in St. Louis, or nearly so, allowing only for a reasonable
profit. Lewis did not intend to deceive us and was chagrined at the villanous conduct of
the Company afterwards. This, with the fraudulent violation of their contracts and
promises in the Indian country, by this concern, makes up a piece of extortion, fraud
and swindling, that ought to consign the parties engaged in it to eternal infamy. The
heaviest blame must rest on the unprincipled Liza; but the rest of the company must
suffer the stigma of having connived at and profited by the villainy, if they did not
actually originate and urge it onward. I sued them on my contract, and was the only one
who did so. After many delays and continuances from term to term, I was glad to get rid
of the suits and them, by giving my note for one hundred dollars to the Company. This,
with my debt to Colter, made me a loser to the amount of three hundred dollars by one
years trapping on the head waters of the Missouri. Some of the Americans, however,
fared much worse, and were deterred from returning to the settlements at all, by their
debts to the Company, which they were hopeless of discharging by any ordinary
business in which they could engage. Such is one instance of the kind and considerate
justice of wealth, to defenceless poverty, beautifully illustrating the truth of the
sentiment uttered by somebody, "take care of the rich and the rich will take care of the
poor."

Chapter III

Employment from 1810 to 1821 — The First Santa Fe Traders — Members of the Fourth
Santa Fe expedition — Ascent of the Arkansas — Vaugean — Removal of the Town of
Little Rock — Fort Smith and Major Bradford — Trading with the Osages — Capt.
Prior — Salt River — Salt Plains and Shining Mountains — Robbery by the
Indians — Sufferings from thirst — Attack by the Indians — Further Robberies — The One
Eyed Chief and Big Star — Indian Council — Critical Situation — Rescue by Spanish
officers — Cordaro — Journey continued — San Miguil Peccas and its Indian
inhabitants — Santa Fe — Farming.

AFTER MY RETURN from the Upper Missouri, I went in the fall of 1810 to
Pennsylvania, where I remained two years and married. I returned to St. Louis, in the
fall of 1813, procured a keel-boat and with it, navigated the Ohio and Mississippi,
between Pittsburgh and St. Louis, carrying goods for large profits. I continued in this
business till the fall of 1815, when I took a stock of goods from McKnight & Brady of St.
Louis, and opened a store in Harrisonville, Illinois, dividing profits equally among us. In
the fall of 1818, I went to Baltimore with letters of recommendation and bought goods
for cash and on credit to the amount of seventeen thousand dollars, and brought them
in waggons to Pittsburgh where I left them to await a rise of the river, which was too low
for navigation, and came to St. Louis. My goods were not sent on till the following
spring, when they had greatly fallen in price and the market was filled with a large
supply. I was unable to dispose of my stock even at cost. I struggled on through the
years 1819-'20, with the certain prospect of bankruptcy before my face, amid the
clamors of creditors, and without the hope of extricating myself from impending ruin.
About this time Baum, Beard, and Chambers, with some others, came to St. Louis from
Santa Fe, where they had been imprisoned by the Government ever since the year
1810. They, with Robert, brother of John McKnight of the firm of McKnight and Brady,
and eight others, were the first American Santa Fe traders that carried goods from St.
Louis to New Mexico. Immediately on reaching Santa Fe their goods were confiscated
by the Governor, sold at public auction, and themselves taken to Chihuahua and there
thrown into prison, where they were kept in more or less strict confinement for the
space of ten years, being supported during that time by the proceeds of McKnight's
goods, the Government allowing 18 3/4 cents per day to each man.
This, I believe was
the second company of Americans that ever entered Santa Fe. Clem. Morgan, a
Portuguese and very wealthy, made his way thither at a very early day, while Louisiana
belonged to Spain, and returned in safety, making a good venture. Gen. Zebulon Pike
was the first American visitor to that country. He went in the year 1807, and on his
arrival was marched through Mexico as a prisoner of war, but was soon after released
on demand of our Government. One of his men was detained thirteen years by the
Spaniards, and returned with Chambers to St. Louis. Pike in the beginning of our last
war with England, met a soldier's death at Queenston Heights. The second company
from the United States was McKnight's and their treatment has been noticed. The third
was under the command of Augustus Chouteau and Demun of St. Louis, and was
composed entirely of French. They made a very unsuccessful venture, being deprived
of their goods worth $40,000., without the least remuneration, and themselves
imprisoned for a short time. I commanded the fourth expedition to Santa Fe from the
United States, and the first that was made after the Mexican Revolution and the
declaration of their independence on Spain, and I was the first American that ever
visited the country and escaped a prison while there. John McKnight desired to go to
Mexico to see his brother, procure his release if he were still in prison, and return with
him to the States. The first information he had received, concerning Robert, in ten
years, came by his companions above named, who had left him in the interior of
Mexico. He proposed that I should take my goods and accompany him, and supposed
that under Spanish protection we could go unmolested by the Government. The news
of the Revolution had not yet reached this country. This appeared to be the best course
to retrieve my affairs, and I prepared for the journey by procuring a passport from Don
Onis the Spanish Minister, countersigned by John Q. Adams, then Secretary of State
under Monroe. I loaded a keel-boat with goods to the value of $10,000, and laid in a
large quantity of biscuit, whiskey, flour, lead and powder, for trading with the Indians on
the route. I started from St. Louis on the tenth of May, A. D. 1821, and descended the
Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas. The company consisted, besides myself, of
McKnight, my brother John G. James, David Kirkee, Wm. Shearer, Alexander Howard,
Benjamin Potter, John Ivy, and Francois Maesaw, a Spaniard. Two joined us after
starting, Frederick Hector at the mouth of the Ohio, and James Wilson in the Cherokee
country, making eleven in all, young and daring men, eager for excitement and
adventure. Ascending the Arkansas, the first settlement we reached was "Eau Post,"
inhabited principally by French. A few days afterwards we arrived in the country of the
Quawpaws, where we met with a Frenchman named Veaugean, an old man of
considerable wealth, who treated us with hospitality. His son had just returned from
hunting with a party of Quawpaws and had been attacked by the Pawnees, who killed
several of his Indian companions. Pawnee was then the name of all the tribes that are
now known as Camanches. I had never known or heard of any Indians of that name
before I visited their country on my way to Santa Fe. The Americans previously knew
them only as Pawnees. The account brought by Veaugean's son surprised me, as we
had heard that all the Indians on our route were friendly. Leaving Veaugean's, we
proceeded up the river through a very fertile country. Dense and heavy woods of
valuable timber lined both sides of the river, both below "Eau Post" and above as far as
we went, and the river bottoms, which are large, were covered by extensive cane-brakes, which
appeared impenetrable even by the rattlesnake. Small fields of corn,
squash and pumpkins, cultivated by Indians, appeared in view on the low banks of the
river. Since entering the Arkansas we had found the country quite level; after sailing
and pushing about three hundred miles from the mouth, we now reached the first high
land, near Little Rock the capital of the Territory as established that spring. The
archives had not yet been removed from Eau Post, the former capital. As we
approached Little Rock we beheld a scene of true Western life and character, that no
other country could present. First we saw a large wood and stone building in flames,
and then about one hundred men, painted, masked and disguised in almost every
conceivable manner, engaged in removing the Town. These men, with ropes and
chains would march off a frame house on wheels and logs, place it about three or four
hundred yards from its former site and then return and move off another in the same
manner. They all seemed tolerably drunk, and among them I recognized almost every
European language spoken. They were a jolly set indeed. Thus they worked amid
songs and shouts, until by night-fall they had completely changed the site of their Town.
Such buildings as they could not move they burned down, without a dissentant voice.
The occasion of this strange proceeding was as follows: The Territorial Court was then
in session at Diamond Hill, about thirty miles distant on the river above, and the news
had reached Little Rock on the morning of our arrival, that a suit pending in this Court
and involving the title to the town, wherein one Russell of St. Louis was the claimant,
had gone against the citizens of Little Rock and in favor of Russell. The whole
community instantly turned out en masse and in one day and night Mr. Russell's land
was disencumbered of the Town of Little Rock. They coolly and quietly, though not
without much unnecessary noise, took the Town up and set it down on a neighboring
claim of the Quawpaw tribe, and fire removed what was irremovable in a more
convenient way. The free and enlightened citizens of Little Rock made a change of
Landlords more rapidly than Bonaparte took Moscow. Here I saw Matthew Lyon, then
quite an old man, canvassing for Congress. He was a man of some note in John
Adam's administration, by whom he was imprisoned, under the Alien and Sedition law.
He came into Little Rock, with the Judge and Lawyers, from Diamond Hill, the day after
the grand moving of the Town. He rode a mule, which had thrown him into a bayou, and
his appearance as he came in, covered with mud from head to foot, was a subject of
much laughter for his companions and the town of Little Rock, which had now began to
assume a look of some age, being just twenty-four hours old. Lyon was not returned to
Congress and he died a few years afterwards. In 1824 I saw his grave at Spadre, in the
Cherokee country, where he had kept a trading establishment. Before I left Little Rock I
procured a license to trade with all the Indian tribes on the Arkansas and its tributaries,
from Secretary Charles Crittenden, Governor Miller being out of the Territory. I gave
bond in the sum of $3000, with Judge Scott as security, to observe the laws of the
United States, and it always appeared to me that I was entitled to indemnity from my
country for the robberies which I suffered from the Indians. My losses in this way were
tremendous and have weighed me down to the earth from that day to this, the best
portion of my life; but not one cent have I ever been able to obtain from the justice of
Congress, whose laws I was bound to obey, whose license from the hands of a
Government officer I carried with me, and who by every rule of justice was bound to
protect me in a business which it authorized by license and regulated by heavy
penalties.

Continuing our course up the river, we passed through a more rocky and uneven
country than that below Little Rock. The Maumel mountain, some fifty or sixty miles
above this Town, and a mile from the south bank of the river, is a great curiosity. It rises
six hundred feet above the level of the river, and in shape resembles a coal-pint. A
large spring of fresh water gushes from the top and runs down its side to the river. We
now passed through the country of the Cherokees, whose farms and log houses made
a fine appearance on the banks of the river, aud would compare favorably with those of
any western State. They were at this time highly civilized and have since made great
advances in the arts. These were that part of the nation called the Rogers party, who
just emigrated from the east to the west side of the Mississippi, and ultimately, about
the year 1833, with the powerful agency of the General Government, caused the
removal of the whole nation to this country, where they are making rapid progress in
national prosperity. Their Delegate will take his seat in our next Congress as
Representative of the first Indian Territory ever organized. If this nation shall form a
nucleus for the preservation of the race from annihilation, the cheerless predictions of
the Physiologists will be most fortunately falsified, and the Philanthropist will rejoice in
the perpetuation of the true Indian race and character.

Fort Smith lies about six hundred miles from the mouth of the Arkansas on the western
confines of the Cherokee country, and near that of the Osages, which tribes were now
at war with each other. We stopped a few days at this post, where we were well
received by Lieutenant Scott and the commandant Major Bradford, who examined and
approved our license. The Major was a small stern looking man, an excellent
disciplinarian and a gallant officer. He invited McKnight and me to make his house our
home until we had rested our company and put our guns in good order preparatory to
entering the Indian country. He and his wife treated us with the utmost kindness and
hospitality, and on leaving, presented us a large supply of garden vegetables, with a
barrel of onions, which we were not to broach until we had killed our first buffalo, when
we were enjoined to have "a general feast in honor of old Billy Bradford." His kindness
made a deep impression on us. We here tried to mark out our course for the future,
which we determined should be the Arkansas to within sixty miles Loas in New Mexico,
Baum having told me that this river was navigable thus far, and the Canadian being two
shallow for our boat. Parting from the hospitable old Major, we ascended the river to the
Salt Fork, which enters from the south, passing in our way the Grand River, then called
the Six Bulls, and the Verdigris, at whose mouth Fort Gibson has since been built. The
waters of the Salt Fork are very much saturated with salt, tasting like strong brine where
they enter the Arkansas. After this we proceeded with great difficulty, and about thirty
miles above the South Fork our further progress was entirely stopped by the lowness of
the water. There being no prospect of a speedy rise in the river at this time, which was
the mouth of August, we returned four miles to an Osage road, which we had observed
in going up, and here I sent three men to the Osage village, which I knew could not be
far distant, for the purpose of opening a trade with this tribe. In five or six days these
men returned to me with forty Osages and a Capt. Prior, formerly of the United States
army. I mentioned him in the first chapter as the commander of the escort of the
Mandan Chief Shehaka. He was a Sergeant in Lewis and Clark's expedition, and a
Captain at the battle of New Orleans. On the reduction of the army after the war, he
was discharged to make way for some parlor soldier and sunshine patriot, and turned
out in his old age upon the "world's wide common." I found him here among the
Osages, with whom he had taken refuge from his country's ingratitude, and was living
as one of their tribe, where he may yet be unless death has discharged the debt his
country owed him.

I took out some goods, and with McKnight, my brother, and the Spaniard Macsaw,
accompanied Capt. Prior and the Indians to their village, to the south east, which we
reached in two days. Here we found our old friend, Maj. Bradford Hugh Glenn, from
Cincinnati, with goods and about twenty men, on his way to the Spanish country, and
also, Capt. Barbour, and Indian trader from the mouth of the Verdigris, and formerly of
Pittsburgh. I proposed to Glenn, whom I shall have to mention unfavorably hereafter, to
travel in company to the Spanish country; but he appearing averse to the arrangement,
I did not urge it upon him. I bought twenty-three horses of the Osages at high prices, for
packing my goods, and agreed with Barbour to "cache" (hide in the earth) my heaviest
and least portable goods near the Arkansas, for him to take in the following spring down
to his store at the mouth of the Verdigris, sell them and account to me for the proceeds
on my return. I returned with my companions to the river and carefully concealed my
flour, whiskey, lead, hardware and other heavy goods. I showed Capt. Prior, who came
up the next day with a party of Osages going out on their fall hunt, the place where I
had hid these goods, and packing the rest on my horses, we left the Arkansas to our
right, or the north, and travelled with Prior and the Indians for two days toward the
south-west. We then left them and bore directly to the west in the direction as pointed
out to us by the Indians, of the Salt Plains and Shining Mountains. In eleven days we
struck the Salt Fork, mentioned before, and which is set down on the latest maps as the
Cinnamon river. In the distance before us we discerned the bright mountains before
mentioned, which the Indians had directed us to pass in our route. We held on our
course for two days along the right bank of the Salt Fork, over mounds and between
hills of sand which the wind had blown up in some place to the height of one hundred
feet. Our progress was very slow, the horses sometimes sinking to their breasts in the
sand. The bed of the river in many places was quite dry, the water being lost in the
sand, and as we advanced, it appeared covered over with salt, like snow. The water,
mantled over with salt, stood in frequent pools, from the bottom of which we could
scoop up that mineral in bushels. The channel of the Salt river became narrower and
more shallow as we proceeded. The sand so obstructed our progress that we crossed
the river where traveling was less difficult, and soon struck a branch of the Salt Fork,
equally impregnated with salt as the main stream. Large crusts of salt lay at the water's
edge. Proceeding on we came to the Shining Mountains, and a high hill evidently based
upon salt. It stands near the salt branch, the banks of which were composed of salt
rocks, from which the men broke off large pieces with their tomahawks. Here, and in the
Salt river was enough of this valuable mineral to supply the world for an indefinite
period. The Shining Mountains lay south of us about four miles and had been visible for
several days. We visited them and found one of the greatest curiosities in our country. I
have never seen them nor the salt plains in which they stand put down on any map or
described by any white man. All of our travellers in this region appear to have passed to
the north or south of them, as I have never seen or heard of a description of them,
except by the Indians, who come here regularly and in great force, for salt. The
mountains stand separate from each other, are about three hundred feet in height, and
are quite flat on the summit. They are composed, in part, of a shining semi-transparent
rock, which reflects the rays of the sun to a great distance. It is soft, being easily cut
with a knife, and the hand is visible through thin pieces of it when held in the sun light.
They extend about thirty miles on the left of Salt river in a north-west and south-east
direction, are all of an equal height, containing an area on the top of from ten rods to a
hundred acres, and are entirely destitute of timber. The tops of most of them were
inaccessible. With great difficulty we ascended one of about ten acres in extent, from
which we saw along the tops of the others, they all being on the same plane. We found
the short thin grass of the prairie below, but no shrub except the prickly pear. The
ground was covered with immense quantities of buffalo manure, when left there it would
be vain to conjecture. The substance from the ground was clay for upwards of two
hundred feet, then came the rock from ten to twenty feet thick, projecting over the earth,
and the soil above was about ten feet in depth. The rock is fast crumbling away by the
action of water, which seems to dissolve it, as we found very few fragments at the foot
of the mountains and none of any considerable size. The whole country was evidently
at one time, on a level with these singular elevations.

We continued our course up the bank of the same branch of Salt river by which we had
come. Its water was now, after leaving the salt plains, fresh and wholesome, and we
travelled along its bank two days, when finding it took us too much to the north, we left it
and bore to the southwest. This was the sixth day after reaching the Salt Fork, and
seventeen after parting with Capt. Prior and the Osages. We killed seven buffalo after
leaving the Shining Mountains, and dried the meat. The carcasses of the buffaloes
attracting the buzzards with some old shoes and other small articles left on the ground
by the men, served to discover us to a war party of Camanches who were now on our
trail. After leaving the Salt Branch we travelled till near night without finding wood or
water, and then bore again to the north-west till we struck the Branch. We cooked our
meat with fuel of buffalo manure which we gathered for the purpose. Towards morning
we were all alarmed by the barking of our dogs, followed by a clapping noise and the
sound of footsteps. We slept no more on that night, and in the morning saw upwards of
a hundred Indians at a short distance coming with the design of intercepting our horses,
which were some distance from the camp. One horse was pierced by a lance. I
exhibited the flag, which diverted their course, and they came among us in a very
hostile manner, seizing whatever they could lay their hands on. The interpreter told us
they were a war party and advised me to make peace with them by giving them
presents. I did so, distributing about three thousand dollars worth of goods among
them. There were two Chiefs in this party, one of whom was friendly and the other,
called the one-eyed Chief, seemed determined to take our lives. His party, however,
was in a minority and soon after went off. The friendly Chief then came up to me and on
account of his interference in our behalf demanded more presents, which I made to
him. He told me that if I came to the village I should be well treated and implored me
not to go up the Arkansas. I afterwards learned that the one-eyed Chief had left me with
the purpose of waylaying us on that river and taking our lives, which was the reason of
the friendly Chief's advice. Those who were hostile, and they were the whole of the
one-eyed Chief's party, seemed perfectly enfuriated against us. They scrutinized our
equipments, said we had Osage horses and were spies of that nation, with whom they
were then at war. At last we were rid of the presence of these unpleasant visitors with
many dismal apprehensions for the future. The friendly Chief left a Mexican Indian, an
interpreter, with us as a guide. With him we struck from the south branch of Salt river,
for the north Fork of the Canadian, which the Indians told us we should reach in one
day's travel. Going in a direction west of south we struck the river on the second day,
having suffered dreadfully for want of water. McKnight and I went forward to find water
and killed a buffalo. We drank large draughts of the blood of this animal, which I
recollect tasted like milk. We found several ponds of water, so tainted with buffalo
manure as to cause us to vomit on drinking of it. We missed the party on that night and
found them on the next day, all sick from the water they had drunk, and exhausted by
previous fatigue and thirst. The horses were nearly worn out by the same causes. We
travelled along the North Fork of the Canadian for seven or eight days, until we reached
its head in a large morass, or swamp, about two miles wide, and five or six long, situate
in a valley which gradually narrows and disappears at last in the vast plain to the west.
We went up this valley which was now dry, but in the spring is filled with a rapid stream.
We saw thousands of buffalo along its course, and found a large pond about an acre in
extent, but the water was so spoiled by manure, as to sicken us all. After passing
through this valley we bore for the Canadian river towards the south, and on the second
day, after intense suffering from thirst, we struck a fine spring of fresh water. This was a
rich source of real refreshment and enjoyment. Following the stream made by this
spring we reached the Canadian, and travelled up its course for several days. We had
encamped for the night on the twenty-first day after meeting the Camanches who had
robbed us on the branch of Salt river, when we saw a great number of mounted Indians
coming over a rising ground in our front, and at their head the friendly Chief, who
advanced with outstretched hands crying towauc, towaue, - "good, good." Coming
up
he embraced me in Indian custom, and requested me to go with him to his village. Here
an Indian seized a brass kettle and rode off with it. This act alarmed me, and I asked
the Chief if he could protect my property if I went with him. He said he could not, and I
declined his invitation for that night, and requested him to leave a body of trusty
Indians, to defend me till morning. He did so, and we were not molested that night. In
the morning we marched with our guard from the left bank of the river, where we had
encamped, to the right bank, and in two miles above we found the whole village of the
Indians, numbering a thousand lodges, situated in the bottom near the base of a large
mound. We were met by one of the principal Chiefs, whose looks were to me ominous
of evil. He was a little vicious looking old man and eyed me most maliciously. We were
taken close to the foot of the mound near this Chief's lodge, and there we encamped,
having piled up my goods and covered them with skins. The Indians then demanded
presents and about a thousand chiefs and warriors surrounded us. I laid out for them
tobacco, powder, lead, vermillion, calico, and other articles, amounting to about $1,000
in value. This did not satisfy them, and they began to break open my bales of cloth and
divide my finest woolens designed for the Spanish market, among them. After losing
about $1000 more in this way, I induced them to desist from further robbery. The
principal chief named Big Star, now appeared and said they had enough. They divided
the spoil among two or three thousand, of whom all got some. They tore up the cloth
into garments for the middle and blankets. They tied the silk handkerchiefs to their hair
as ornaments, which streamed in the wind. This robbery over, I smoked with them and
prepared to go on my journey. This they forbade and we were compelled to stay over
that day. We kept a strong guard through the night on our goods and horses. On the
next morning they pretended that another party had arrived who required presents. This
information was brought by a one-eyed Spaniard, who acted as interpreter and had got
from me as a present, a whole suit of cloth and a large supply of amunition. He was the
instigator of this new demand. The Indians began to gather around us, and break open
and drag about the goods. The Chiefs stood off, taking no part. I then made them
another set of presents, worth, probably, a thousand dollars more. We now hoped to be
allowed to pass on, and requested leave to go, but they refused it; and the friendly chief
advised us to stay. I had seen many savages, but none so suspicious and little as
these. They seemed to regard us as spies in their country. We staid with them the
second day and night without any further robbery than that I have mentioned. On the
third day of my stay, the one-eyed Chief came into the village from the Arkansas, where
he had been, with a hundred men, awaiting us with murderous designs. On his coming
in, the interpreter, Maesaw, ran to me, saying we should certainly be killed, and the
woman and children ran from their lodges like chickens before a hawk. I had made the
Big Star Chief my friend by presenting him with a splendid sword. He now came up and
took me into the little old Chiefs lodge, saying I would be shot if I remained out. Our
time seemed nearly come. In the distance we saw the one-eyed with his troop
approaching, all painted black and armed with guns, bows and arrows and lances. We
were eleven against a hundred at least, perhaps thousands. The Big Star sent a
messenger to my enemy and asked him what would satisfy him in lieu of our lives. He
replied that he must have for each of his men as much cloth as his outstretched arms
would once measure; an equal quantity of calico; powder, lead, vermillion, knives,
beads, looking glasses, &c., and for himself the sword which he had seen on the south
branch of Salt river. I sent him word that I had not the vermillion, knives, beads and
looking glasses, nor the sword, which I had presented to the Big Star. He said the story
about the sword was a lie, that I had given it to Big Star to prevent him from getting it,
and that he would have it or my scalp, and as to the other articles he would take cloth
instead of them. The Big Star here sent to his lodge for the sword, and taking it in his
hand, he pressed its side to his heart and then handed it to me, saying, "take it and
send it to the one-eyed Chief. You have no other way of saving your life and the lives of
your people." I did as he advised, and measured off about five hundred yards of cloth
and calicoe, of which the former cost me seven dollars per yard in Baltimore, and sent
them to my deadly enemy. This appeared to pacify him and again I proposed to go on
my way. To this they again objected, saying that the whole village would go down the
river in the morning, and we should then be permitted to part from them and continue
our course up the river as before meeting with them. We had the horses brought up,
and prepared, that evening, for an early start in the morning. One half kept guard while
the rest of our party endeavored to sleep. But there was no rest for any of us on that
most dismal night. This was the third sleepless night which we had passed with these
ferocious savages, and we were nearly worn down by fatigue, anxiety and watching.
Before day-light a party of boys ascended the mound in our rear, and from the top
stoned our company until they were dislodged and driven down by the exertions of the
friendly Chief. Uncertain of our fate and nearly exhausted, we awaited in sullen
patience, the issue of events. The sun as he rose seemed to wear an aspect of gloom,
and every thing portended evil to our little band. Six of my horses had been taken in the
night, and I ordered my men out to find and bring them back. The friendly Chief now
came to me with great concern and dejection in his countenance, and begged of me not
to leave my station or allow the men to go out.

"Keep together," said he, "or you will be killed. The men that go out will be murdered.
Don't try to get back your horses." I saw that the whole army were preparing to decamp,
and pulling down their lodges. Sometime after sunrise, I perceived about fifty of the
Chiefs and older Indians going up unto the mound above us, in our rear, followed by a
multitude of young warriors and boys. An old man turned and drove them back: the two
friendly Chiefs did not go up. Arrived at the top, this company formed the circle, sat
down and smoked. Then one of their number commenced what seemed to us, from his
gestures, to be a violent harangue, designed to inflame their passions. I told my
company that this council would decide our fate. They asked me how I knew this. If they
come down, said I, friendly, we shall have nothing to fear; but if sulky, and out of humor,
we have nothing to hope. Put your guns in good order, and be prepared for the worst.
We must sell our lives as dearly as possible. In this sentiment they all agreed with me,
and we prepared to meet our fate, whatever it should be, like men. During this time, the
lodges, with the women and children, were fast disappearing, and the men assembling
before us on horseback and afoot, armed with guns, bows, and lances. The council on
the hill, after an hour's consultation, descended, and we soon learned that our deaths
were determined upon. Those Indians who before were sociable, were now distant and
sulky. When spoken to by any of us they made no answer.

The friendly Chief and Big Star, who had taken no part in the council, now came and
shook hands, and bade us farewell. I besought them to stay with us; shaking their
heads sorrowfully, they went away. The press in front now greatly increased. Nearly two
thousand warriors stood before and around us, with the evident intention of making an
attack, and appeared to be waiting the signal for the onslaught. We stood in a circle
with our backs to the goods and saddles heaped up above all our heads; and with our
rifles raised to our breasts, and our fingers on the triggers. We were also armed with
knives and tomahawks. Old Jemmy Wilson seized an axe, having no gun, and swore he
would hew his way as far as he could. Thus we stood eleven against two thousand, with
death staring us in the face. All seemed unwilling to commence the bloody work. The
suspense was awful. I stood between John McKnight and my brother, and noticed their
countenances. McKnight's face was white, and his chin and lips were quivering. My
brother, as brave a man as ever lived, looked desperate and determined. Not a man but
seemed bent to die in arms and fighting, and none were overcome by fear.

Thus we stood near half an hour in deathly silence; at length the White Bear warrior, a
Chief dressed in a whole Bear skin, with the claws hanging over his hands, rode swiftly
towards us, through the crowd, with his lance in his hand, as if to annihilate us at once;
but seeing the dangerous position he was in, he stopped short about five paces from
us, and glared upon me with the most deadly malignity. Finding he could not reach me
with his lance, he took out his pistol, examined the priming, tossed out the powder from
the pan, re-primed, and again fixed his devilish eyes full upon me. But he saw that I
could fire first, and he kept his pistol down. Here McKnight first broke the dreadful
silence, saying, "let us commence James, you will be the first one killed — this
suspense is worse than death; the black Chief is my mark." I said no, McKnight, let us
forbear as long as they do; for us to begin is folly in the extreme; but as soon as a gun
is fired, we must fire, rush in and sell our lives as dearly as possible. Here Kirker walked
out with his gun over his head, gave it up, and passed into the crowd unmolested. In a
minute afterwards we heard a cry from a distance, approaching nearer and nearer, of
Tabbaho, Tabbaho.* (*White men.) This I supposed was on account of Kirker's
surrender. The cry increased and spread throughout the crowd. Looking towards the
south-west, whence the cry arose, while the While Bear's attention was withdrawn, I
saw six horsemen riding at full speed, and as they came nearer, we heard the words in
Spanish, save them! save them! In a moment a Spanish officer rushed into our arms,
exclaiming, thank God we are in time; you are all safe and unhurt. He said that he had
heard of our danger by accident, that morning, and ridden twenty miles to save us. All
the circumstances of our rescue we learned the next day. With joyous and thankful
hearts for our escape from a death that, five minutes before seemed inevitable, we
prepared to depart with our preservers. I had bidden farewell, as I thought forever, to
my wife, child, home and all its endearments, and the thoughts of them were now
overpowering to me. The Spaniards asked the Indians why they were going to kill us.
They answered, that the Spanish governor at Santa Fe had commanded them not to let
any American pass, but that we were determined to go in spite of them, so that to stop
us and keep their promise to the Spanish Governor, they thought they were compelled
to take our lives. The Spaniards told them that this was under the government of Spain,
but that they were now independent and free, and brothers to the Americans. This was
the first news I had heard of the Mexican revolution.

The two friendly Chiefs now returned, and I showed the Spaniards our passport. The
Indians brought in and delivered up four of my horses. The whole village, soon after the
arrival of the Spaniards, went down the river; and our party, except Maesaw and myself,
with two of the Spanish officers, started forward towards the Spanish camp, about
twenty miles distant. We four remained behind to recover the two missing horses, and
then followed our companions. We were lost, at dark, among the cliffs bordering the
river, where we made fire for cooking our suppers, and encamped for the night. Early
the next morning we reached the Spanish encampment, where our party was awaiting
us. As we approached the camp there came out to meet us, a tall Indian of about
seventy years of age, dressed in the complete regimentals of an American Colonel, with
blue coat, red sash, white pantaloons, epaulets and sword. He advanced with an erect,
military air and saluted us with great dignity and address. His eyes were still bright and
piercing, undimmed in the least by age, and he had a high, noble forehead and Roman
nose. His whole port and air struck me forcibly as those of a real commander and a
hero. After saluting us he handed me a paper which I read as follows, as nearly as I
now remember.

This is to certify that Cordaro, a Chief of the Camanches has visited the Fort at
Nacotoche with fifteen of his tribe, that he remained here two weeks, and during the
whole time behaved very well. It is my request that all Americans who meet him or any
of his tribe, should treat him and them with great respect and kindness, as they are true
friends of the United States.

JOHN JAMESON
U. S. Indian Agent at Nacotoche on Red River

This Chief, Cordaro, was the cause of our being then in existence. He told us he had
promised his "great friend at Nacotoche" that he would protect all Americans that came
through his country, and he very earnestly requested us to inform his "great friend" that
he had been as good as his word. On entering the encampment, we found about fifty
Spaniards and three hundred Camanche warriors, who had just returned from an
expedition against the Navahoes, a tribe inhabiting the country west of Santa Fe and
the mountains, and who were then at war with the Spaniards. On their return from this
campaign this party had come from Santa Fe with their Camanche allies into their
country to hunt for buffalo and had encamped the night before our rescue from the
Camanches, on the spot where we now found them. On the next morning a party of
Indians belong to this band were hunting their horses in the prairie and met another
party from the army below, who had us in custody, engaged in the same manner, who
informed them that their countrymen had taken a company of Americans prisoners, and
were going to kill them all that morning, and divide their goods among the army; that the
whole village was breaking up and preparing to go down the Canadian, and that the
pulling down of the last lodge was to be the signal for our massacre. On hearing this the
first party hastened back to their camp with the news which brought out most of the
young warriors to come down for a share of the plunder of my goods. The Chief
Cordaro went instantly, on hearing this account, to the Spanish officers, told them that a
company of Americans were to be murdered that morning by his countrymen,
mentioned the signal for the attack, said he was too old to ride fast, or he would go
himself to the rescue, and adjured them to mount and ride without sparing the horses,
as not a moment was to be lost. Six of them mounted and rode as Cordaro had told
them to do, and we saw their foaming steeds and heard the cry of Tabbaho — (white
men) — just in time to save us from extermination. A minute after would probably have
been too late. Our determined attitude averted the blow and prolonged our time to the
last moment, when our deliverers appeared; but without them, the next instant would
have seen a volley of shot and arrows lay most of us low and the lance and tomahawk
would have soon completed the work on us all.

Cordaro, the noble and true hearted savage, appeared to rejoice at our escape as
much as we. He desired particularly that his "great friend" at Nacotoche should hear of
his agency in saving us, and I had to promise him repeatedly that I would surely inform
Col. Jameson when I saw him, of the manner in which his friend, Cordaro, had
performed his promise to him. If John Jameson be still alive and this page meet his eye,
I shall have cause to felicitate myself in having at last kept my word to my Camanche
preserver.

We spent that day with Cordaro and the Spaniards, and held a council or "talk" with
them. Cordaro made a speech dissuading me from going to Santa Fe on account of the
treatment which the Americans had always received from the Government there. "They
will imprison you," said he to me, "as they have imprisoned all Americans that ever went
to Santa Fe. You will meet the fate of all your countrymen before you." The Spanish
officers, who were all present at this harangue, smiled and said there was no danger of
any mis-treatment to us, now that they had an independent government. Cordaro shook
his head increduously, and told them that we were under his protection; that he would
himself go to Sante Fe after we had arrived there, and if he found us imprisoned, he
would immediately go to war with them. "The Americans are my friends," said he, "and I
will not permit them to be hurt. I have promised my great friend of Nacotoche to protect
all Americans that come through my country." The Spaniards promised to treat us well,
but our protector seemed to be very suspicious of them and evidently gave little faith to
their promises. We found at this camp an excellent Spanish interpreter, who spoke the
Camanche language as well as his own. By him I was informed that the Indians took
me for the Frenchman Vaugean, whom we had seen in the country of the Quawpaws, a
tribe of kin to the Osages, and who, while hunting on the Canadian in the spring before
with a party of thirty French and Indians of the former tribe, had been attacked by the
Camanches, who were defeated and driven back with considerable loss. Vaugean, like
myself, was a tall man, and the Indians here and those we had met before, considered
me the commander in this battle. The one-eyed interpreter had concealed this fact from
me, and we now had some difficulty in satisfying the Indians that we were not the same
party who with Vaugean, were in alliance with their enemies, the Osages. The charge
was frequently renewed, but we at last succeeded in repelling it and quieting their
suspicions. On the next day, the third day after meeting with the Spanish officers, we
parted with Cordero who followed his countrymen down the Canadian, with the Spanish
force in his company. Two of the Spanish officers remained to accompany us to Santa
Fe. They were all very gentlemanly and liberal minded men. One Spanish citizen of
Santa Fe had hired to return with me as a guide. We once more took up our march
along the Canadian and over the immense plains by the trail of the Spaniards we had
just parted with. The whole country here is one immense prairie. I observed many huge
granite rocks standing like stone buildings, some of them, one hundred feet high. The
earth seemed to have been washed from around them and the prairies below to have
been formed by deposits of earth and crumbled rocks from these and similar elevations.
Some were covered with earth and cedar trees, but most of them were entirely bare. In
three days after leaving Cordaro we came in sight of the Rocky Mountains, whose three
principal peaks, covered with perpetual snow were glittering in the sun. The most
northern and highest of these peaks is set down on the latest map I have seen as
"James' Peak or Pike's." Gen. Pike endeavored to reach its top, but without success.
After my return I made a rough map with a pen, of this country, for the use of Senator
Kane of Illinois, and in the next map published by Government, I saw my name affixed
to this peak, as I supposed, by the agency of Mr. Kane. The peak bore no name known
to our company when we saw it and I gave it none then or afterwards. In two days more
we came to an old Spanish Fort, dismantled and deserted, which had been built many
years before in expectation of an invasion from the United States. This was about one
hundred miles from Sante Fe. We soon encountered large herds of sheep, attended by
Shepherds, and on the second day after passing the Fort, came to a small town in a
narrow ravine on the Peccas river and at the foot of a high cliff. Here I became
acquainted with an old Spaniard, named Ortiso, who in his youth had been captured by
the Pawnees and sold to Chouteau of St. Louis, where he had learned French and
whence he returned home by the way of New Orleans, St. Antoine in Texas and the
interior of Mexico. He informed me more particularly than I had yet heard, of the
Mexican Revolution, and foretold that Iturbide would be elected President at the
ensuing election. We proceeded up the bank of the Peccas by a narrow road,
impassable for waggons. One of the horses with all my powder and some of the most
valuable goods, here fell down a precipice into a beaver dam in the river. The horse
was uninjured but the goods were nearly all spoiled. The next town on our route was
Sam Miguel, fifteen miles from the last, an old Spanish town of about a hundred
houses, a large church, and two miserably constructed flour mills. Here was the best
water-power for mills, and the country in the vicinity abounded in the finest pine timber I
had ever seen. But no attempt is made to improve the immense advantages which
nature offers. Every thing that the inhabitants were connected with seemed going to
decay. We left San Miguel on the following morning with the Alcalde and a company of
Spaniards bound for Sante Fe. We stopped at night at the ancient Indian village of
Peccas about fifteen miles from San Miguel. I slept in the Fort, which encloses two or
three acres in an oblong, the sides of which are bounded by brick houses three stories
high, and without any entrances in front. The window frames were five feet long and
three-fourths of a foot in width, being made thus narrow to prevent all ingress through
them. The lights were made of izing-glass and each story was supplied with similar
windows. A balcony surmounted the first and second stories and moveable ladders
were used in ascending to them on the front. We entered the Fort by a gate which led
into a large square. On the roofs, which like those of all the houses in Mexico are flat,
were large heaps of stones for annoying an enemy. I noticed that the timbers which
extended out from the walls about six feet and supported the balconies, were all hewn
with stone hatchets. The floors were of brick, laid on poles, bark and mortar. The brick
was burned in the sun and made much larger than ours, being about two feet by one.
The walls were covered with plaster made of lime and izing-glass. I was informed by the
Spaniards and Indians that this town and Fort are of unknown antiquity, and stood there
in considerable splendor in the time of the Conquerors. The climate being dry and
equable and the wood in the buildings the best of pine and cedar, the towns here suffer
but little by natural decay. The Indians have lost all tradition of the settlement of the
town of Peccas. It stood a remarkable proof of the advance made by them in the arts of
civilization before the Spaniards came among them. All the houses are well built and
showed marks of comfort and refinement. The inhabitants, who were all Indians, treated
us with great kindness and hospitality. In the evening I employed an Indian to take my
horses to pasture, and in the morning when he brought them up I asked him what I
should pay him. He asked for powder and I was about to give him some, when the
Spanish officer forbade me, saying it was against the law to supply the Indians with
amunition. Arms are kept out of their hands by their masters who prohibit all trade in
those articles with any of the tribes around them. On the next day in the evening, we
came in sight of Santa Fe, which presented a fine appearance in the distance. It is
beautifully situated on a plain of dry and rolling ground, at the foot of a high mountain,
and a small stream which rises in the mountain to the west runs directly through the
city. It contained a population at this time of six thousand. The houses were all white-washed
outside and in, and presented a very neat and pleasing sight to the eye of the
traveller. They are all flat on the roof and most of them one story in height. There are
five very splendid churches, all Roman Catholic, which are embellished with pictures,
and ornaments of gold and silver in the most costly style. The chalices were of pure
gold and candlesticks of silver. The principal buildings, including the Fort, are built
around the public square in the middle of the city. The Fort, which occupies the whole
side of this square, encloses about ten acres, and is built on the plan of the Peccas Fort
above described. There is an outer wall about eight feet in height, enclosing the
buildings, which like those at Peccas bound the inner square. The whole was falling to
decay and but few soldiers were stationed in it. The farms are without fences or walls,
and the cattle, hogs, &c., have to be confined during the raising and harvesting of
crops. They raise onions, peas, beans, corn, wheat and red pepper — the last a principal
ingredient in Spanish food. Potatoes and turnips were unknown. I saw peach trees, but
none of apples, cherries, or pears. The gardens were enclosed.

The country is entirely destitute of rains except in the month of June and July, when the
rivers are raised to a great height. A continual drought prevails throughout all the rest of
the year, not even relieved by dews. Consequently the ground has to irrigated by
means of the many streams which rise in the mountains and flow into the Rio Grande;
and for this purpose canals are cut through every farm. Land that can be watered is of
immense value, while that which is not near the streams is worthless. While in Sante
Fe, a Spaniard took me sixteen miles south, to show me his farm of 15 acres, for which
he had just paid $100 per acre, and which lay conveniently to water. Hogs and poultry
are scarce, while sheep, goats, and cattle are very abundant.

Chapter IV

Interview with Governor Malgaris — Commencement of business — Departure of
McKnight — Arrival of Cordaro — His Speech — His visit to Nacotoche — His death and
character — Hugh Glenn — Celebration of Mexican Independence — Gambling and
dissipation — Mexican Indians — Domestic manufactures — Visit of the Utahs — Their
Horses — Speech of the Chief Lechat — War with the Navahoes — Cowardly murder of
their Chiefs by the Spaniards — Militia of Santa Fe — Attempt to go to Senoria — Stopped
by the Governor — Interview with the Adjutant — Selling out — Hugh Glenn again — How
the Governor paid me a Debt — Spanish Justice — Departure for home.

I ENTERED SANTE FE on the first day of December, A. D. 1821, and immediately
went with Ortise as interpreter, to the Governor's palatia or house, to whom I made
known my object in visiting his country, and showed my passport. He remarked on
reading it, that they were entirely independent of Spain, that the new government had
not laid any duties on imports and gave me permission to vend my goods. I rented a
house, and on the next day commenced business. In about two weeks I took in $200,
which I advanced to John McKnight for the expenses of his journey to Durango, about
sixteen hundred miles south, where his brother Robert was living after his enlargement
from prison. They both returned in the month of April following. Soon after McKnights
departure, I heard of Hugh Glenn's arrival at Loas, sixty miles north of Santa Fe and
was soon after favored with a visit from him. He came down to Santa Fe, borrowed $60
from me, and at the end of a week returned to Loas.

About six weeks after I reached Santa Fe my true friend and protector, Cordaro, came
in according to promise, with thirty of his tribe, to ascertain if we were at liberty. He was
dressed in his full regimentals and commanded the respect of the Spanish officials, who
behaved towards him with great deference. By his request a council was held, which
convened in the Spanish Council House on the public square, and was attended by the
Spanish officers, magistrates, and principal citizens of Santa Fe. Cordaro made the
speech for which he had caused the council to be held. He expressed his pleasure at
finding that we and the Spaniards were friends, that he would be pleased to see us
always living together like brothers and hoped that the American trade would come to
his country as well as to the Spaniards. He complained that we traded with their
enemies, the Osages, and furnished them with powder, lead, and guns, but had no
intercourse with the Camanches. He hoped the Government of the United States would
interfere and stop the depredations of the Osages upon his nation. "They steal our
horses and murder our people," said he, "and the Americans sell them the arms and
amunition which they use in war upon us. We want your trade, and if you will come
among us we will not cheat nor rob you. I have had a talk with my nation and told them
they had done a great wrong in treating you as they did, and they promised never to do
so again. They say they will pay you in horses and mules for the goods they took from
you on the Canadian, if you will only come once more into our country. Come with your
goods among us; you shall be well treated. I pledge you my word, the word of Cordaro,
that you shall not be hurt nor your goods taken from you without full payment. Each of
my nation promises to give you a horse if you will come and trade with us once more,
and though poor, and though I got none of your goods, yet will I give you two of the best
horses in the nation. Come to our country once more and you shall find friends among
the Camanches. Come and you shall be safe. Cordaro says it." The old warrior spoke
like a orator and looked like a statesman. He appeared conscious of the vast superiority
of the whites, or rather of the Americans, to his own race and desired the elevation of
his countrymen by adopting some of our improvements and customs. For the Spaniards
he entertained a strong aversion and dislike; not at all mingled with fear, however, for
he spoke to them always as an equal or superior. They refused to trade with his nation
in arms and had nothing besides which his people wanted. Their remarkable disposition
to treachery appeared to be perfectly known to the old Chieftain.

After the council, Cordaro desired me to write a letter for him to his great friend Col.
Jameson of Nacatoche, and make known to him the manner in which he had
remembered his promise to protect the Americans in his country, by saving me and my
company from death at the hands of his countrymen. I wrote the letter and delivered it
to him. On the next day we parted, and I never saw him again. In my trip to the
Camanche country in 1824 I was informed by the Indians that he went to Nacatoche
with my letter to Col. Jameson, who gave him three horses, loaded with presents. By
this means he returned to his country a rich man, and soon after became sick and died.
He was a sagacious, right-hearted patriot and a brave warrior, who in different
circumstances might have accomplished the destiny of a hero and savior of his country.

I continued my trading, though without much success on account of the scarcity of
money. I had seen enough of Mexican society to be thoroughly disgusted with it. I had
not supposed it possible for any society to be as profligate and vicious as I found all
ranks of that in Santa Fe. The Indians are much superior to their Spanish masters in all
the qualities of a useful and meritorious population.

On the fifth of February a celebration took place of Mexican Independence. A few days
before this appointed time, a meeting of the Spanish officers and principal citizens was
held at the house of the Alcalde to make arrangements for the celebration. They sent
for me, asked what was the custom in my country on such occasions, and requested
my advice in the matter. I advised them to raise a liberty pole, hoist a flag, and fire a
salute for each Province. They counted up the Provinces or States, and discovered that
Mexico contained twenty-one, including Texas. They said they knew nothing of the rule
of proceeding in such cases and desired me to superintend the work. I sent out men to
the neighboring mountains for the tallest pine that could be found. They returned with
one thirty feet long. I sent them out again, and they brought in another much longer
than the first. I spliced these together, prepared a flag rope, and raised the whole, as a
liberty pole, about seventy feet high. There was now great perplexity for a national
emblem and motto for the flag, none having yet been devised, and those of Spain being
out of the question. I recommended the Eagle, but they at last agreed upon two clasped
hands in sign of brotherhood and amity with all nations. By day light on the morning of
the fifth I was aroused to direct the raising of the flag. I arose and went to the square,
where I found about a dozen men with the Governor, John Facundo Malgaris, all in a
quandary, not knowing what to do. I informed the Governor that all was ready for raising
the flag, which honor belonged to him. "Oh do it yourself," said he, "you understand
such things." So, I raised the first flag in the free and independent State of New Mexico.
As the flag went up, the cannon fired and men and women from all quarters of the city
came running, some half dressed, to the public square, which was soon filled with the
population of this city. The people of the surrounding country also came in, and for five
days the square was covered with Spaniards and Indians from every part of the
province. During this whole time the city exhibited a scene of universal carousing and
revelry. All classes abandoned themselves to the most reckless dissipation and
profligacy. No Italian carnival ever exceeded this celebration in thoughtlessness, vice
and licentiousness of every description. Men, women and children crowded every part
of the city, and the carousal was kept up equally by night and day. There seemed to be
no time for sleep. Tables for gambling surrounded the square and continually occupied
the attention of crowds. Dice and Faro-banks were all the time in constant play. I never
saw any people so infatuated with the passion for gaming. Women of rank were seen
betting at the Faro-banks and dice tables. They frequently lost all their money; then
followed the jewelry from their fingers, arms and ears: then the ribose or sash edged
with gold, which they wear over the shoulders, was staked and lost, when the fair
gamesters would go to their homes for money to redeem the last pledge and if possible,
continue the play. Men and women on all sides of me, were thus engaged, and were all
equally absorbed in the fluctuating fortunes of these games. The Demon of chance and
of avarice seemed to possess them all, to the loss of what little reason nature had
originally made theirs. One universal jubilee, like bedlam broke loose, reigned in Santa
Fe for five days and nights. Freedom without restraint or license, was the order of the
day; and thus did these rejoicing republicans continue the celebration of their
Independence, till nature was too much exhausted to support the dissipation any
longer. The crowds then dispersed to their homes with all the punishments of excess,
with which pleasure visits her votaries. I saw enough during this five days revelry to
convince me that the republicans of New Mexico were unfit to govern themselves or
any body else. The Indians acted with more moderation and reason in their rejoicing
than the Spaniards. On the second day of the celebration a large company of men and
women from San Felipe, an Indian town forty miles south of Santa Fe, marched into the
city, displaying the best formed persons I had yet seen in the country. The men were a
head taller than the Spaniards around them, and their women were extremely beautiful,
with fine figure and a graceful, elegant carriage. They were all tastefully dressed in
cotton cloth of their own weaving and decorated with coral beads of a brilliant red color.
Many wore rich pearl necklaces and jewelry of great value. I was told by Ortise that the
ornaments of stone, silver and gold which some of these Indian ladies wore, were worth
five hundred dollars. The red coral was worth one hundred dollars per pound. Many of
the Indians, as the reader may suppose from this description of their women, are very
wealthy. The men were also elegantly dressed in fine cloth, manufactured by their own
wives and daughters. The Americans with their Tariff and "protection of home industry,"
might learn a lesson from these wise and industrious Indians. I heard nothing among
them of a Tariff to protect their "domestic manufactures." They worked and produced
and protection came of itself without the curse of government interference. This Indian
company danced very gracefully upon the public square to the sound of a drum and the
singing of the older members of their band. In this exercise they displayed great skill
and dexterity. When intermingled in apparently hopeless confusion in a very
complicated figure, so that the dance seemed on the point of breaking up, suddenly at
the tap of the drum, each found his partner and each couple their place, without the
least disorder and in admirable harmony. About the same time the Peccas Indians
came into the city, dressed in skins of bulls and bears. At a distance their disguise was
quite successful and they looked like the animals which they counterfeited so well that
the people fled frightened at their appearance, in great confusion from the square.

I have spoken before, in favorable terms of the Mexican Indians. They are a nobler race
of people than their masters the descendants of the conquerors; more courageous and
more generous; more faithful to their word and more ingenious and intellectual than the
Spaniards. The men are generally six feet in stature, well formed and of an open, frank,
and manly deportment. Their women are very fascinating, and far superior in virtue, as
in beauty, to the greater number of the Spanish females. I was informed that all the
tribes, the Utahs, the Navahoes, and others inhabiting the country west of the
Mountains to the Gulf of California, like those in Mexico, lived in comfortable houses,
raised wheat and corn, and had good mills for grinding their grain. I saw many
specimens of their skills in the useful arts, and brought home with me some blankets
and counterpanes, of Indian manufacture, of exquisite workmanship, which I have used
in my family for twenty-five years. They are, generally far in advance of the Spaniards
around them, in all the arts of civilized life as well as in the virtues that give value to
national character.

In the latter part of February 1 received a deputation of fifty Indians from the Utah tribe
on the west side of the mountains. They came riding into the city, and paraded on the
public square, all well mounted on the most elegant horses I had ever seen. The
animals were of a very superior breed, with their slender tapering legs and short, fine
hair, like our best blooded racers. They were of almost every color, some spotted and
striped as if painted for ornament. The Indians alighted at the Council House and sent a
request for me to visit them. On arriving I found them all awaiting me in the Council
House, with a company of Spanish officers and gentlemen led hither by curiosity. On
entering I was greeted by the Chief and his companions, who shook hands with me.
The Chief, whose name was Lechat, was a young man of about thirty and of a right
Princely port and bearing. He told me in the Spanish language, which he spoke fluently,
that he had come expressly to see me and have a talk with me. "You are Americans,
we are told, and you have come from your country afar off to trade with the Spaniards.
We want your trade. Come to our country with your goods. Come and trade with the
Utahs. We have horses, mules and sheep, more than we want. We heard that you
wanted beaver skins. The beavers in our country are eating up our corn. All our rivers
are full of them. Their dams back up the water in the rivers all along their course from
the mountains to the Big water. Come over among us and you shall have as many
beaver skins as you want." Turning round and pointing to the Spaniards, in most
contemptuous manner and with a scornful look he said, 'What can you get from these?
They have nothing to trade with you. They have nothing but a few poor horses and
mules, a little puncha, and a little tola (tobacco and corn meal porridge )
not fit for any
body to use. They are poor — too poor for you to trade with. Come among the Utahs if
you wish to trade with profit. Look at our horses here. Have the Spaniards any such
horses? No, they are too poor. Such as these we have in our country by the thousand,
and also cattle, sheep and mules. These Spaniards," said he, turning and pointing his
finger at them in a style of contempt which John Randolph would have envied, "what
are they? What have they? They wont even give us two loads of powder and lead for a
beaver skin, and for a good reason they have not as much as they want themselves.
They have nothing that you want. We have every thing that they have, and many things
that they have not." Here a Spaniard cried out: "You have no money." Like a true stump
orator the Utah replied, "and you have very little. You are depicca." In other words
you
are poor miserable devils and we are the true capitalists of the country. With this and
much more of the same purport, he concluded his harangue, which was delivered in the
most independent and lordly manner possible. He looked like a King upbraiding his
subjects for being poor, when they might be rich, and his whole conduct seemed to me
like bearding a wild beast in his den. The "talk" being had, Lechat produced the
calama
or pipe, and we smoked together in the manner of the Indians. I sent to my store and
procured six plugs of tobacco and some handkerchiefs, which I presented to him and
his company, telling them when they smoked the tobacco with their Chiefs to remember
the Americans, and treat all who visited their country from mine as they would their own
brothers. The council now broke up and the Chief, reiterating his invitations to me to
visit his country, mounted his noble steed, and with his company rode out of the city,
singing and displaying the handkerchiefs I had presented them, from the ends of their
lances as standards. They departed without the least show of respect for the
Spaniards, but rather with a strong demonstration on the part of Lechat of contempt for
them. I noticed them at the council enquiring of this Chief with considerable interest
what the Navahoes were doing, and whether they were preparing to attack the Spanish
settlements. They had been at war with this tribe for several years, and seemed to fear
that the Utahs might take part in it as allies of the Navahoes, for which reason they
conducted themselves with the utmost respect and forbearance towards Lechat and his
band. What was the immediate cause of this war, I did not learn, but I saw and heard
enough of it to enlist my sympathies with the Navahoes. A few days after the visit of the
Utahs, I saw a solitary Indian of that tribe, crossing the public square in the direction of
the Governor's house, and driving before him a fat heifer. He went up to the Governor's
door, to whom he sent word that he had a present for him, and was admitted. What
followed I learned from Ortise, an old Alcalde, with whom I boarded during the time of
my stay in Santa Fe. As he entered the room of the Governor, the Navaho prostrated
himself on his face. The Governor stepped towards him and with a spurning motion of
the foot, which touched the Indians head, asked him who he was and what he wanted.
The poor Indian arose on his knees and said he was a Navaho, and had come to
implore peace for his nation. "We are tired of war and we want peace," said he; "our
crops are destroyed, our women and children are starving. Oh! give us peace!" The
Governor asked the interpreter what he said, and being told, the christian
replied — "Tell
him I do not want peace, I want war." With this answer the Indian was dismissed, the
Governor keeping his heifer. The poor fellow came to my store, announced his name
and nation, and requested me to go among his tribe and trade. He said the rivers were
full of beaver and beaver dams — that they had horses and mules which they would
exchange for powder, lead and tobacco. The Indians are destitute of amunition and
guns, and Spanish laws prohibit all trade with them in these articles. I gave him several
plugs of tobacco, a knife and other small articles, and told him when he went back to
his country to smoke my tobacco with his Chiefs and tell them if any Americans came to
their country to treat them like brothers. He went off with a guard as far as the outposts
on the route to his country. But I have no doubt he was murdered by the Spaniards long
before reaching his home. About a week after this, sixteen Navaho Chiefs came into
the town of St. James, sixty miles below Santa Fe on the Del Norte, and requested the
commander of the Fort to allow them to pass on to the Governor at Santa Fe, saying
that they had come to make peace. The commander invited them into the Fort, smoked
with them and made a show of friendship. He had placed a Spaniard on each side of
every Indian as they sat and smoked in a circle, and at a signal each Indian was seized
by his two Spanish companions and held fast while others despatched them by
stabbing each one to the heart. A Spaniard who figured in this butchery showed me his
knife which he said had killed eight of them. Their dead bodies were thrown over the
wall of the Fort and covered with a little earth in a gully. A few days afterwards five more
of the same nation appeared on the bank of the river opposite the town, and enquired
for their countrymen. The Spaniards told them they had gone on to Sante Fe, invited
them to come over the river, and said they should be well treated. They crossed and
were murdered in the same manner as the others. There again appeared three Indians
on the opposite bank, enquiring for their Chiefs. They were decoyed across, taken into
the town under the mask of friendship, and also murdered in cold blood. In a few days
two more appeared, but could not be induced to cross; when some Spanish horsemen
went down the river to intercept them. Perceiving this movement, they fled and no more
embassies came in. The next news that came told of a descent made by the Navahoes
in great force, on the settlements in the south, in which they killed all of every age and
condition, burned and destroyed all they could not take away with them, and drove
away the sheep, cattle and horses. They came from the south directly towards Santa
Fe, sweeping everything before them, and leaving the land desolate behind them. They
recrossed the Del Norte below Santa Fe, and passed to the north, laid bare the country
around the town of Toas, and then disappeared with all their booty. While this was
going on, Malgaris was getting out the militia, and putting nearly all the inhabitants
under arms, preparatory to an expedition. I was requested to go, but I preferred to be a
spectator in such a war. The militia of Santa Fe when on parade, beggared all
description. Falstaff's company was well equipped and well furnished compared with
these troops of Gov. Malgaris! Such a gang of tatterdemallions I never saw before or
since. They were of all colors, with all kinds of dresses and every species of arms.
Some were bare headed, others bare backed — some had hats without rims or crowns,
and some wore coats without skirts; others again wore coats without sleeves. Most of
them were armed with bows and arrows. A few had guns that looked as if they had
been imported by Cortez, while others had iron hoops fastened to the ends of poles,
which passed for lances. The doughty Governor Facunda Malgaris, on foot, in his cloak
and chapeau de bras, was reviewing this noble army. He was five feet high, nearly as
thick as he was long, and as he waddled from one end of the line to the other I thought
of Alexander and Hannibal and Caesar, and how their glories would soon be eclipsed
by this hero of Santa Fe. After him followed the Adjutant in his jacket with red cuffs and
collar, and with his frog-sticker, called a sword, at his side. He examined the bows and
arrows, lances and other arms of these invincibles. He with the little Governor seemed
big with the fate of New Mexico. At last when all was ready the Governor sent them
forth to the war and himself went to his dinner. In the mean time where was the
enemy — the blood-thirsty Navahoes? They had returned in safety to their own country
with all their plunder, and were even then far beyond the reach of Gov. Malgaris' troop
of scare crows.

In the beginning of March finding that trade was dull and money very scarce in Santa
Fe, I enquired for a better place of business and was advised by Ortise to go to Senora
on the Gulf of California, where gold and silver was more abundant than in New Mexico.
I requested him to go with me; he declined going himself but procured his brother,
whom I hired, to go as guide for $12, for each mule load. I packed up my goods, and
had got ready for the journey when Ortise came in with a gloomy countenance and
asked if I had asked permission of the Governor to go to Senora. I said I had not, and
he advised me to see him. I went to his house, apprehensive of hostility, and found the
dignitary walking with a lordly air up and down his piazza. As I approached he strutted
away from me to the opposite end of the gallery without deigning to notice me. I stood
and awaited his return, and as he came up, I accosted him politely, and said I could not
sell my goods in Santa Fe and had called to obtain his permission to go with them to
Senora, where I had understood money was more plenty than in Santa Fe. "You can't
go sir," growled his Excellency, and continued his promenade. I followed and asked him
why I could not go. He said he had no orders to let me go. I asked him if he had any
orders to prevent me. He said no. I then said, you know that I have a passport from my
government, approved by the Spanish minister. "Oh we have nothing to do with the
Spanish Government." But you have something to do with my Government. I shall start
for Senora, and if you arrest or imprison me on my way, my Government shall hear
from me. This appeared to agitate the little grandee and set him to thinking for a
moment. He paced to and fro a while, stopped short, and asked how I was going. With
Don Francisco Ortise, as guide. At this he burst into a loud laugh. "Ho, ho! Don
Francisco will go with you, will he? Well Don Thomas, you can go, but I will send a party
of soldiers with you to the outposts, and if any Spaniard attempt to go further with you I
will have him brought back in irons and thrown into prison. You will have to pass
through the country of the Apaches, and you will be robbed, perhaps murdered if you
have no Spaniard with you. Now go, Don Thomas, now go — ha, ha, ha." I now 'turned
and left him. Ortise, whom I considered my friend, advised me by no means, to make
the attempt to reach Senora without a Spanish guide and I gave up the project. I
regarded this, the result of a plot to detain me in Santa Fe till Spring, when they knew I
was to return, and would have to sell my goods at any price. I went on the evening of
my interview with the Governor, to the house of a sick Lieutenant, where I found the
Adjutant and several other officers. They asked, with a sly glance at each other, when I
was going to Senora. I am not going. "Why so, we heard you were all ready to start.
You have a passport, have you not?" Yes, said I, but the Governor threatens to
imprison any Spaniard that attempts to go with me. He has imprisoned all my
countrymen that came here before me, and I suppose, if he dared, he would imprison
me. Here the sick Lieutenant shook my knee by way of caution, and the Adjutant
leaped up exclaiming, "If he dared! What do you mean sir, be careful how you talk;" and
put his hand on the butcher knife at his side, called a sword. I had a dirk at my breast,
as good a weapon as his, and facing him I repeated, yes, if he dared; but he dares not,
nor dare any of you imprison me while I observe your laws. You have robbed and
imprisoned all my countrymen heretofore, but my Government will now stop this
baseness and cruelty to the Americans. If you violate my rights while I have an
American passport my Government will avenge my wrongs on your heads. This
appeared to cool the Adjutant, who said we were friends and that he would not tell the
Governor. Tell him or not as you please said I.

I wish for the honor of my country, or rather of my Government, that the name of
American citizen were a better protection in a foreign country than it is. Ancient Rome
and modern England are examples to us in this respect. A subject of the English
monarchy in a foreign country is sure that any flagrant violation of his natural rights will
be avenged, if necessary, by the whole military and naval power of his country. An
Englishman like an ancient Roman citizen, knows that his Government will look after
him and is sure of protection. An American is sure of nothing. His Government may
amid the turmoil of electioneering, demand him from his jailors, but it is much more
likely to overlook him entirely as beneath its regard. The case of Robert McKnight, who
returned in April with John, his brother, from Durango, after an imprisonment of ten
years, was a remarkable instance of the delinquency of our Government in this
particular. His goods had been confiscated and himself and his companions thrown into
prison, where they remained ten years, and during the whole time their own
Government was sleeping on their wrongs. No notice whatever was taken of them; and
when McKnight returned to his country he was equally unsuccessful in seeking redress.
"I will go back to Mexico, said he, swear allegiance to their Government and become a
citizen. I have resided the prescribed term of years, and there is a better chance for
obtaining justice from the Mexicans, scoundrels as they are, than from my own
Government. I will go and recover as a citizen of Mexico what I lost as a citizen of the
United States. My own Government refuses to do me justice, and I will renounce it
forever. I would not raise a straw in its defence." He accordingly returned to Mexico,
where he probably received remuneration for his losses, and where he now lives a
citizen of the country.

While in Santa Fe I was a frequent visitor at the house of the parish Priest, a very
gentlemanly, intelligent man, where I often found an interesting company assembled. I
supped at his house on one occasion with sixteen Spanish gentlemen of education, and
some of distinction. The conversation happened to turn on the power and condition of
the United States, and particularly on the country west of the Mississippi. They said the
country west of this river once belonged to them, and agreed that it would some day
return to their possession. They said that Spain had ceded it to Bonaparte without their
consent, and that, it of right, belonged to Mexico. They also expressed great
dissatisfaction with the line of the Sabine, alleging that it ought to have been and would
yet be the Mississippi instead of the former river. I told them that my countrymen were
also dissatisfied with the Sabine as the boundary. "Ah exclaimed one, then we shall
have little difficulty in changing it; both sides will be agreed." Not so fast, said I, we think
the boundary ought to have been the Rio Del Norte. "What! said they, the Del Norte;
that would take in Santa Fe." Yes, Seignors, said I, we claim to the Del Norte. "Never,
never — you will never get it, and if it ever comes to a trial of power between Mexico and
the States, we will have to the Mississippi. You will be compelled to give it to us." I told
them to mark my words and said, if ever the boundary is changed you will see it go
westward and not to the east.

The Spring was nearly gone and most of my goods remained unsold. Money was very
scarce, and I had little prospect of selling them at any price. I offered them at cost, and
at last found a purchaser of most of them in a Spaniard named Pino, who paid me one
thousand dollars in cash and an equal sum in horses and mules. He borrowed the
money of Francisco Chavis, the father of Antonio, who was murdered in the United
States by Mason, Brown and McDaniel. The last two were convicted of the murder on
the testimony of Mason, and executed in St. Louis in 1844. After this trade with Pino I
had still on my hands a large quantity of brown and grey cloths, which were unsaleable
in the Spanish market; blue and other colors being preferred. These cloths I sold to
Hugh Glenn, who again honored me with a visit in the latter part of May, staid with me
two weeks, borrowed forty dollars, in addition to the sixty I had already loaned him, and
gave me his note for the money and goods, which (the note) I have held to this day. He
wanted the goods to sell to his company who were trapping near Toas, and promised to
pay me the money as soon as he reached St. Louis and disposed of his beaver fur.
Taking him for a man of honor I treated him as such, to my own loss. I was now ready
to depart for home, having disposed or got rid rather of my goods and collected all my
debts except one from the Governor. During the winter his Excellency had sent his
Excellency's Secretary to my store for some samples of cloth. The Secretary after
taking these with some shawls for the examination of his master, returned and
purchased goods for his Excellency to the sum of eighty-three dollars and told me to
charge them to his Excellency. I did so, and on the day before my departure I called at
his Excellency's house and found his Excellency looking every inch a Governor, and
very pompously pacing the piazza as was the custom of his Excellency. I remarked that
I was going home. "Very well," said his Excellency, "you can go;" and walked on. I
awaited his Excellency's return, and again remarked that I was going home; that I did
not expect to return, and would be thankful for the amount of his Excellency's account
with me. "I have not a dollar. The Government has not paid me in ten years, and how
can I pay my creditors." I offered to take two mules. "I have no more mules than I want
myself," said his Excellency. With this I parted forever with Gov. Malgaris of New
Mexico. Ortise told me I could not sue him as he was "the head of the law."

Some time before this I saw a Spaniard who had been imprisoned for more than a year,
and was then set at liberty. He had just come from the Commandant, whom he asked
for the cause of his imprisonment. "You are at liberty now, are you not?" "Yes; but I
wish to know why I have been so long deprived of liberty." "You are at liberty now, and
that is enough for you to know," said the Commandant: And this was all the satisfaction
the poor Spaniard could get. The following will illustrate the summary method of
administering justice in Santa Fe. There were many American deserters in the city from
the Fort at Nacatoche, some of whom had lived here sixteen years, and were generally
of bad character. Robert McKnight had entrusted one of these, named Finch, with a
valuable sword to sell for him. Finch pawned the sword for twelve dollars, and seeing
him with money I told McKnight he would never get any thing for his sword as Finch
was spending the money he had raised on it. "There is no danger," said he, "Finch
would not trifle with me." On the next day he demanded his sword or the money from
Finch, who refused to give him any satisfaction; whereupon McKnight seized and
dashed him about twelve feet, head foremost against a door of the Fort. I interfered and
saved Finch from any further injury than a severe cut on his head. He then confessed
the fact of his having pawned the sword and named the place where it could be found.
McKnight now went before the Alcalde, a stern old Spaniard, who called his officer and
handed him his gold headed cane as a warrant bringing up Finch, the sword and the
pawnee. They all arrived, Finch with his head tied up in a handkerchief, when the
Alcade took the sword from the Spaniard who had taken it in pledge, and asked him if
he knew for what purpose Finch had received it. He admitted that Finch told him at the
time of pawning it, that he had received it to sell. "Then," said the Alcalde, "if you had
bought it, though only for five dollars, you could now keep it, but you had no right to
take it in pawn;" and thereupon handed the sword to McKnight as the true owner. "But
who will pay me my twelve dollars?" said the bailee. "That lies between you and Finch."
"And what am I to get for my broken head," said Finch. "I know nothing about that
Finch," said the magistrate, "but if you do not behave yourself better than you have
done of late, I will drive you out of the province." So, McKnight got his sword and a little
revenge without having a bill of costs or lawyer's fee to pay.

Most of my company had been engaged in trapping during my stay in Santa Fe, and
some had gone far into the interior of Mexico. Collecting such as remained, and in
company with the McKnights, I now, on the first of June 1822, bade adieu forever to the
capital of New Mexico, and was perfectly content never to repeat my visit to it or any
other part of the country.

Chapter V

Col. Glenn's conversion — His profits thereby —
Avenues to New Mexico — An instance of
Spanish treachery and cruelty — Glenn's cowardice — Meeting with the
Pawnees — Mexican Indians — Battle between the Pawnees and
Osages — Disappearance of Glenn — Chouteau and the Osages — Indian
revenge — Passage of the Shoshoua — Singular Ferrying — Entrance into
Missouri — Robbery by the Osages — Interview with Missionaries — Arrival at St.
Louis — More of Glenn — Home — Still greater troubles with creditors than with the
Indians.

I STARTED FROM Santa Fe with Hugh Glenn on his return to Toas, whence he was to
go with me to St. Louis. On arriving at the Spanish village of San Domingo, about thirty
miles north of Santa Fe and five from the Indian village of St. John, we stopped by
invitation, at the house of the parish Priest, where the principal citizens visited us
during the evening. Here I was somewhat astonished to hear Glenn, late at night, tell
the Priest that he wished to be baptised and join the Church. He said in answer to the
Priest's questions, that he had entertained this intention for a long time before coming
to this country; that he had endeavored to instruct himself in relation to the tenets of the
Church, and produced a Catholic book, called the "Pious Guide." The Priest told him to
reflect on the subject and pray to the Almighty for light. In the morning Glenn appeared
with a very sanctimonious face, and repeated his request. The Priest questioned him
on the Catholic faith and the noviciate answered very intelligently. It being Sunday,
they went to the Church to have the ceremony of baptism performed on the new
convert. Leroy, one of his company, acted as God-father, and the Priest procured a
very respectable old lady of the place to act as God-mother. The saintly Colonel Glenn
looked the very picture of sanctity during the performance of the rite; and he afterwards
made a good penny by the operation. The people were very fond of their new convert,
and showered honors and presents on Col. Glenn. He was talking of coming back from
the States with goods for this market, and many of the inhabitants entrusted him with
mules and money to make purchases for them, of which they never heard again.
Among his religious rewards was a lot of the finest Indian blankets. The Colonel was a
great and good man among the people from this time and bore the cross of his religion
with edifying humility.

On the next day we reached Toas, a small settlement near the mountains, in a beautiful
and fertile valley through which the Rio Grande flows and offers most valuable
inducements to the manufacturer by its water power; but none are here found with
sufficient enterprise to seize the offer. The country in the hands of the Americans would
bloom like a garden, while now it languishes in a state of half wilderness — half
cultivation.

Leaving Toas with eighty-three horses and mules, with Glenn and his company who
had about sixty, we travelled in one day half way over the mountains, stopping at night
in the middle of the pass. Here we were overtaken by some Spaniards with a mule load
of bread, biscuit, sugar, chocolate and other delicacies, all sent as a present to the
godly Glenn by his God-mother. He took them, I suppose, with pious thankfulness,
much as a hog takes the acorns that fall to him from an oak tree — without ever looking
up. On my return to St. Louis I heard of Glenn's sneers and ridicule of the clergy of New
Mexico. The truth concerning them was bad enough, but I was astonished to hear them
villified and abused by the so lately converted Col. Glenn. He changed his religion
more rapidly than his clothes, and made each change a profitable speculation to
himself. Such pliability of conscience may serve a temporary purpose to its fortunate
possessor, but I have found very few of my countrymen, thank God, so base as to
practice hypocrisy to the alarming extent to which this sordid miscreant carried its
exercise.

On the next day we marched to the foot of the mountain over which we had travelled for
about fifty miles, with the utmost ease through a regular and even pass with a very
gradual ascent half the distance and thence with an equally gradual descent. There are
three principal routes over the mountains to New Mexico. One below San Miguel, by
which I went to Santa Fe, and which is easily passible for a large army without danger
of surprise. The second, through which I was now returning to the States, and the third,
a few miles to the north of this last and of Toas, are both excellent passes for travellers
and emigrants, but would not admit of an army in the face of an enemy. They are quite
narrow and closed in by mountains of a great height and by numerous defiles, which in
possession of an enemy would present great obstacles to an invading army. McKnight,
who came through the northern pass, informed me that it was much better than this,
near Toas. These three passes are all of slight elevation, and present a gradual ascent
and descent for about fifty miles, of no difficulty to the passenger and his teams. The
most northern pass will probably become the great outlet of American emigration to
California.

At the end of our two days journey from Toas we encamped at the foot of the mountain
near large piles of stones placed on each side of a ravine or gully. These were in
shape like immense walls, from ten to sixty feet in length, about ten wide, and from four
to six feet in height. They were the tombs of Camanche Indians, who had been
massacred at this place many years before by the Spaniards. An old man in Santa Fe
whom I employed about my store, informed me of the circumstances of this cold
blooded butchery, in which he as a Spanish soldier took part. It happened when my
informant was about twenty years of age, which was a few years previous to our
revolutionary war. According to his account, the Spaniards and Camanches had been
at war with each other for many years with various fortune on both sides, when the
Spanish authorities determined to offer peace to their enemies. For this purpose they
marched with a large army to this place of tombs, and encamped, whence they sent out
heralds to the Camanches with an invitation to the whole nation to come in and smoke
the pipe of peace and bury the hatchet of war forever. The unsuspecting Indians came
in pursuant to the invitation, and brought their women and children to the number of
several thousands. The council was held and a solemn treaty formed which one side
hoped and expected would be inviolate forever. They smoked the pipe of peace and of
brotherhood. Every thing betokened lasting harmony, and for three days an apparently
friendly and cordial intercourse took place between the two powers. During this time the
Spaniards insidiously bought up all the bows and arrows, and other arms of the
Indians, at very high prices, and the third day found these simple children of nature
stripped of their arms and entirely defenceless, in the midst of their treacherous
enemies. Then ensued a scene of murder exceeding in atrocity even the celebrated
slaughter of Glenco, which occurred in Scotland a few years before this, and under
very similar circumstances. The Spaniards having surrounded the Indians, fell
suddenly, at a concerted signal upon them and killed all without regard to age or sex.
The women and children clung to their protectors, who would not leave them and could
not fight, and thus they were all slaughtered together. The bloody work continued most
of the day and the dead were left in large heaps over the ground. The drain or gully,
between the stone walls ran with blood on this terrible day, as the old Spaniard told me,
like a spring freshet. Not a man, woman or child was spared; and my informant
supposed that the example had deterred all the tribes of Camanches from making war
on the people of Santa Fe from that day to this. The citizens of this town may have
been exempt from attack, but we have always heard of the incursions of these tribes on
the Spanish settlements, and conduct like this of the Spaniards near Toas would, and
did sow deep the seeds of incurable hate which have frequently germinated since in
bloody retributions. The countrymen of the slaughtered Indians afterwards erected the
stone walls near to which we were now encamped, and which covered a large extent of
ground, as tombs and monuments for the dead. Their power was greatly broken by the
loss of so many warriors and the nation was a long time in recovering its former
strength.

On the next morning after crossing the mountain we entered the prairies, which were
frequently quite broken and uneven. The spurs of the mountains were covered with
pine and cedar. Directing our course to the northeast, in four days we struck the
Arkansas a considerable distance from its head. On the next day, and the seventh
since leaving Toas, Col. Glenn, who marched in advance of me, sent back a man with
the news that the "Camanches were ahead." I hastened forward with the McKnights,
and found Glenn stretched out on his blanket in a cold sweat and shaking with fear as if
he had the ague. I asked, where are the Indians? "Oh there they are, hid behind that
willow bar." I searched and found nothing, when Glenn again cried out, "Oh there they
are," pointing to two men riding towards us on the opposite or north side of river, and
also to a company of about two lodges, or twelve Indians going from us to the north-west. I soon
perceived that the two men first seen were white, and one crossed the
river to our company. They were a company of about twelve from Boone's Lick, of
whom one was named Cooper, on their way to Santa Fe. Glenn, as much frightened as
before, now insisted that the Indians whom we had seen had gone off to bring up their
companions to attack us in the night. He had his horses and mules tied together and
ordered his company to prepare for action. I determined to allow my horses to separate
for grazing, and in looking for a good place for herding them, I espied and shot a
buffalo under the cliff. This brought up all my company and a part of Glenn's to
ascertain the cause of the shot, while Glenn was crying out to them, "Come back, you'll
all be killed by the Indians." When I returned to the camp I told him to send some of his
men for a part of the buffalo, if he wanted any meat. "No, I want no meat and I will not
travel with men so rash as to fire their guns while so near the Indians." In the morning
we took up our march, with one of Cooper's party on his return St. Louis, and with
Glenn in advance, who, intent on getting out of danger, soon outtravelled us. About two
o'clock one of his men returned at full speed, calling to us to hurry on — "here are two
thousand Pawnees." On overtaking Glenn I found two Indians, who said the main army
would soon be with them. I had brought with me from Toas two Mexican Indians who
wished to go to the United States.

Glenn knowing that the Pawnees were at war with the Spaniards, said these Mexicans
would be killed on the coming up of the Pawnee army, and implored us to let them be
killed "peaceably" and not endanger the whole party by any unnecessary resistance. I
replied that these Indians were under my protection and should not be hurt. In a short
time we saw the whole army pouring over the bend or knowe before us, which for half a
mile was red with them, all afoot, except three, and every man carrying a rope lasso
or
cabras in his hand. Again did Glenn shake as with the ague, and the cold sweat stood
on his face in drops. "Oh they are coming, they are coming," said he. One of their three
horsemen rode past our band, then returned and halted at some distance as for a
parley. I told Glenn to get up from the ground where he was lying and go out to speak
with this Indian. No, no, said he, we shall be shot down if we go out there. The
creature's courage and senses seemed to have left him together. I went out with
McKnight, shook hands with the Chiefs and brought them in among our men who
spread buffalo skins on the ground for their reception, while I prepared the pipe which
we smoked together. The leader of this army was a brother of the head Chief of the
Pawnee nation, and one of the finest formed and best looking men I have ever seen.
He was six feet in height, with large and powerful limbs, a large head, with a well
developed front, and keen dark hazel eyes. His manner was dignified and
commanding, and he evidently possessed the confidence of his tribe. There was
something in him that at once drew out my heart towards him and secured my esteem
and respect. He was now going, he told me, down to the country of the Camanches,
Arrippahoes and other tribes, near the Salt Plains, to conclude treaties of peace. They
had been out ten days from their country and would have passed this place five days
before had not this Chief been taken sick. He now looked feverish and weak. After
smoking, the whole party of Indians, to the number of one thousand, gathered around
us and four of them marched my Mexican friends into the circle and placed them before
the Chief above mentioned, who was sitting on the ground. All the Indians except this
Chief declared that these two were Mexicans and therefore their enemies, and many
called for their scalps. A Kioway Chief made a violent speech against them. He
understanding the Spanish language, desired them to speak with each other. They
remained silent, he then requested me to make them speak. I appeared not to
understand, but said they were my men and under my protection. The Kioway then
walked close to the Mexicans and in a friendly manner and confidential tone he said:
"You are Spanish Indians, are you not? You can tell me; I am your friend. You know I
am a Kioway; we are not at war with you. We are friends. You are a Spanish Indian are
you not? The Mexicans looked like condemned criminals during this shower of
questions, and one of them looking up and meeting the eye of the Kioway, slighly
nodded an affirmative to the last question. Instantly that Chief clapped his hands and
exclaimed: "Do you hear that, they acknowledge it — they are Spaniards, these are the
men who have been murdering your women and children; kill them — kill them." I placed
myself before the Mexicans to defend them, and told the Pawnee Chiefs they should
not be killed, and the older Chiefs cried out, "come, come, go and get some wood and
make fires. Kill some buffalos and get something to eat." This entirely changed the
current. Loosing sight of their Mexican enemies, they ran off with a shout in obedience
to their Chief and scattered over the prairies on my horses which I loaned them. Away
they went in all directions and soon returned with an abundance of buffalo meat.

When they had disappeared, the Chief who had so soon dispersed them looked at me
with a smile and said, pointing to the two Mexicans, "they are Spanish Indians I know;
but they are with you and shall not be hurt. Last winter my brother went to Washington
and saw our Great Father there. He said a great many things to my brother and made
him a great many presents. And what he said went into his ear, and my brother told it
again to me and it went into my ear and down to my heart. Our Great Father told my
brother to treat all Americans well who visited his country, and my brother promised the
Great Father, in the name of the whole nation, that we would do as he wished us to do
towards the Americans. You and your friends are safe. You shall not be hurt." This
Chief told me of some of his exploits as a warrior, one of which, then the latest, I will
relate. His nation were at war with the Osages and in the fall before he had approached
near to one of their largest villages with a war party, too small however, to risk an
attack. He concealed himself and his men behind a large mound in the prairie at some
distance from the village, and sent forward eight well mounted Pawnees to reconnoitre.
A large party of Osages gave chase to these eight, who retreated before them to the
mound and then separated, four going to the right and four to the left around the
mound, and were followed by their enemies who rushed blindly into the ambuscade.
Our hero, the Pawnee, now gave the war whoop, and fell upon the Osages, whose
jaded horses were unable to carry them out of danger. A hundred of the Osages were
killed in the fight or rather flight, and our hero, the Pawnee Chief, felt all the pride and
pleasure of a Spartan in relating the triumph of his craft and valor.

We encamped at night in company with the Indians, the Chief lying near me, and in the
morning nothing had been disturbed. I made presents of tobacco to the Indians and
selecting one of my best horses and a Spanish saddle, bridle and rope, and leading
him up to the Chief, who had no horse of his own, I presented him with this one and the
trappings. The Chief appeared ashamed at not having any thing to give in return, and
said, "if you ever come again to my country, I will have two horses ready for you." I told
him to treat all Americans well when visiting his country, and to protect them from their
enemies. He appeared greatly affected and at parting, embraced me with both arms.

After proceeding about a mile on our way we saw about thirty Indians running towards
us and Glenn took another fright, said that these were coming to kill the two Mexicans,
and again prayed me to give them up "peaceably." I said no, and the McKnights swore
they would die themselves, rather than desert any of their comrades. They, with the
rest of my company formed a circle around the Mexicans, while Glenn and his men
hurried forward, and I stopped to speak with the advancing Indians. These were a
hunting party belonging to the Pawnee army, who had not seen us before, having just
returned from hunting, and now came to shake hands with us. They overtook Glenn for
the same friendly purpose and then returned in high spirits to their countrymen. Glenn
now pushed on in a trot and soon went out of my sight where he has remained from
that day to this. He sold his fur in St. Louis, went to Cincinnati, and cheated me out of
his debt to me, as I ought to have expected him to do after his previous cowardice and
hypocricy.

We now kept our course down the Arkansas, and on the next day crossed to the north
bank of the river. One of my trunks fell into the river in crossing, and some rhubarb
dissolving, became mixed with my shirts, journal, invoice and other papers in the trunk,
and entirely destroyed them. The writing was obliterated from the papers, and my
journal which I had kept since leaving home was rendered useless. My memory, which
was always very retentive of events and incidents, enables me to supply this loss with
sufficient accuracy.

On the third day after parting with the Pawnees we found the prairie strewed with
buffalo skeletons, and saw at a distance in a bend of the river, a company of men
wearing hats. I learned afterwards that this was a company of traders bound for Santa
Fe, who had been robbed by the Osages. Supposing it to be Glenn's company, I
passed on without hailing them, and encamped at night in a small grove in the edge of
the prairie. We secured the horses and prepared our camp with care against an attack
from Indians, who were evidently in our vicinity. One-half of our band slept while the
rest stood as sentinels. In the morning about an hour before day a sound of violent
crying and lamentation was heard, such as is customary with the Indians when
bewailing the loss of a near relation. This is usually continued from early dawn till sun-rise,
when they end in a sobbing hiccough like that of children after long crying. A
mounted Indian soon after day light, circled around the camp and stopped at a distance
of a quarter of a mile. I cried out Mawhatonga, (long knife). The Indian repeated the
word interrogatively, Mawhatonga? The Indians call the whites Longknives, from their
swords. On my answering howai, (yes ) this Indian came into our camp and informed
me that an Osage village was near by, and that Chouteau, Tonish and Pelche, French
traders, were with them. I started with the Indian for the village and came in view of it
on ascending a hill a short way from the camp, where my companion went off at full
speed, shouting at the top of his voice, and soon brought out the whole village with
Chouteau and other French traders to meet me. A large company of Indians passed me
to meet the company with the horses behind, and by their shouts and tumultuous riding
gave my drove a stampede which made the earth shake beneath them. Chouteau
invited me to breakfast with him, assuring me that my horses, which were now out of
sight, would be recovered. I partook with him of a dish of coffee, the first I had tasted in
twelve months, and of bread and other luxuries of civilization, which brought before my
mind all the comforts of home to which I had been so long a stranger. After returning
from Chouteau's marqui, about noon, we discovered that four horses and several
articles belonging to me and McKnight and a keg of Chouteau's powder had been
stolen by the Indians. Chouteau raged and stormed like a mad man and threatened to
abandon the nation forever and stop all the American trade with them, unless they
produced the stolen articles and abstained from molesting the property of his friends. At
last two of the horses were brought up. Chouteau commanded them to return the rest of
the missing goods, which however, could not be found. The Conjuror now appeared
with his wand lined with bells, which he carried jingling through the village. When he
started, Chouteau remarked that the lost goods would certainly be found by him; as the
Indians had no hope of concealing any thing from their medicine man. The wand
carried him directly towards the place of concealment, and the thieves to avoid
detection soon brought up the goods which they had fortunately found. Two of my
horses were lost beyond recovery. I remained with Chouteau that day till evening, and
was treated by him and his French companions, like a brother. I saw a singular
instance of Indian revenge, while here, which will illustrate their stern and inflexible
sense of wrong. An old Osage was sitting on the ground when a younger Indian with a
rope in hand stopped before him and said: "You struck me one blow when I was a boy,
I will now return it." The sitting Indian without a murmur bent his head and body forward
to receive the justice which awaited him, while the avenger of youthful wrongs drew two
large knots in his rope, and after swinging it around his head several times, brought it
down with all his weight upon the back of his old enemy. The knots seemed to sink into
his back their whole depth. Leaping up in a furious rage, the culprit rushed at the
executioner, seized the rope and endeavored to wrest it from him, claiming one blow in
return. As the pain subsided they became friends and thought no more of the old feud.
"An eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth," is strictly their motto. The blow which he had
received when a boy, had rankled in this Indian's heart for ten or twenty years, and now
having paid it back with interest, he was satisfied and happy. Their method of curing
diseases is very similar to the operations of our animal magnetizers. The Conjour or
Medicine man has an old cloth, which they supposed possessed the charm and power
to restore health. With this majic cloth assisted by other Indians in the same exercise,
he rubs the patient from head to foot, in manner similar to the passes of the
magnetizers, on their subjects. This is continued until the patient acknowledges himself
relieved, or relief is proved to be hopeless.

My company started forward before me, and I remained behind till evening with
Cunigam, for the purpose of finding the two missing horses, which were among the
best. Failing in this, I with my companion, followed in the track of the company. Before
we had gone far a black cloud gathered over our heads, with thunder and lightning in
terrific grandeur. We hastened forward till night, when the storm broke upon us in
torrents of rain which deluged the earth. We lay in the rain all night, and in the morning
the river had risen above the banks, and nearly reached our place of sleeping. The
marks of the muddy water and leaves was visible in a straight line on my companion as
he lay asleep in a gully which the flood had washed without waking him. We saw, a
little distance off, our company, encamped on the spot occupied by the Osages, the
night but one before. Pursuing our course down the river, we came to the Little
Arkansas, which enters the main river from the north, and crossing it, we encamped on
its bank which is here very high. The river rose twenty feet during the night from the
heavy rains which had just fallen. Here we left the Arkansas, which goes to the south,
after making what is called the great northern bend. We travelled to the northeast, the
rain falling abundantly, and came to a creek we were unable to cross. We encamped
on its bank for that night, and the next morning before starting, some thirty Osages
came up with some goods which they had stolen from a party of Santa Fe traders on
the Arkansas above, and offered to us for sale. Our refusal to buy incensed them
greatly, and they blustered and bullied around us until we showed them plainly how
little we were effected by their bravado. One seized a belt of McKnight's, who wrenched
it out of his hands and struck him with it a tremendous blow over the shoulder. After
these Indians left us, we pursued our course on the trail of the Osages. The streams
were all full and difficult in crossing, and the game exceedingly scarce. In ten or twelve
days, after severe suffering for want of food, we reached the Shoshona or Grand River,
where we found corn growing: this was just in the silk without any grain on the ear. We
boiled and ate the cob with a hearty relish. Soon after this we were hailed by Indians,
who came from the north, and finding we were whites, approached us in a friendly
manner and invited us to their village, two miles distant. They laughed at our last meal
and promised us something better than corn cobs. We fared well, with them, on
hominy, meat and bread, which last was made of flour furnished to them by Mr. Sibley,
the factor at Fiery-Prairie Fort. After smoking with these friendly Osages, we proceeded
on our way, and with great difficulty crossed the Shoshona, which flowed with the
rapidity of a mill race. I hired some Indians to swim our horses and goods tied up in
buffalo skins, across, while we followed, some swimming and others in skin boats
towed by men and women in the water. I was ferried over by two women and a man, the
former swimming with cords between their teeth attached to the boat, and the latter
pushing behind, by which means I was safely landed on the shore. Here I found a new
party of Indians, who while our party was crossing the river had stolen three of my
horses. Continuing our course we crossed a creek on a raft near the White-haired
village, which was deserted, and in the evening of the third day after passing the
Shoshona, we crossed the Missouri line. Here my brother exclaimed, - "Thank God we
are once more in the United States." We encamped for the night, and lay down in
fancied security, without setting a guard, and in the morning discovered that a large
number of the horses and mules had been stolen. We had not seen any Indians for
three days, but had been followed by the prowling Osages, who had now effected their
designs upon us. Thirty-eight of my best horses and mules were missing. We followed
the thieves to the White-haired village, and found that they had crossed the creek on
our rafts, and were now beyond all pursuit. We returned and proceeded on with the
remains of my drove. Our next stopping place was Chouteau's trading house on the
north side of the Osage river, about six miles from our last, where we found a
hospitable reception from the French traders. McKnight and I went to the factory or
Government store a few miles above on the river, where we saw a few Indians, the
factor, and an interpreter, who advised me to go, or send some persons back to Grand
River for my horses, where they would probably be found. I hired him and an Indian, for
forty dollars, to return with one of my men to recover the stolen property. In a few days
they came back with the news that the thieves had hastened on towards Chermout's
village on the Arkansas, where they had probably concealed my chattels. Giving them
up for lost, I returned to Chouteau's establishment and endeavored to obtain a skiff for
descending the river. Most of my remaining horses were sore on the back or jaded so
much as to be unable to carry any burdens. We learned from a blacksmith that there
was a missionary station on the river a few miles above, where a good skiff which he
had made, could be procured. The two McKnights, the blacksmith, and myself, went up
to the station, where we found a small village of about fifty inhabitants, old and young,
and a dozen houses. A fine water mill was going up on the opposite or south side of the
river. We found the owners of the skiff, related to them our wants and misfortunes, and
requested the privilege of buying their skiff. They doubted if they could spare the skiff.
We went down to the river and examined the subject of our negotiation, which was a
rough made article, of the value in St. Louis of about three dollars. "We have no stuff to
make another with, should we let this go," said one of the missionaries. "I have some
plank," said the blacksmith, "the same as this was made of, that you may have to make
another if you wish it. These men," continued he, "have been very unfortunate, and by
letting them have the skiff you will do an act of charity. They can't travel without it;" and
I told them I would give any reasonable price for the accommodation. "Well, said the
missionary, what would you be willing to give?" Ten dollars.

"Ho, ho! — I couldn't take that for the skiff, even if I could spare it. But we can't let it go,
we want it for crossing the river to the mill. I v(e)ow and declare I can't spare it." I will
give you fifteen dollars, said I. "Oh no," whined the philanthropist, "we couldn't take that
little, and besides I have no nails to make another with." "I will make nails for you said
the blacksmith; that need not be in your way," and again the benevolent trader was
headed. "But I v(e)ow I don't know how to spare it," said he. I then offered twenty
dollars in specie. "Oh no," said the missionary, "the skiff is worth more than that, but I
don't think we can spare it;" and here the negotiation ended, my companions protesting
that I had offered too much already. We went up to the village where they had three
half-breed children under instruction, and these were all their pupils or converts whom
they were paid by Government to instruct — truly a disinterested company of men.
Learning that we had arrived from Mexico, a number of them gathered around us with
many questions concerning that country, and one asked if they were not in need of
missionaries in that country, and whether much good could not be done and many
converts made there Robert McKnight replied, "they would convert you into the
calaboose d — nd quick, if you were to go among them — you had better stay here." We
left then, shaking the dust of the town from our feet and glad to get rid of the canting
sharpers. We returned to the trading post, made a few bark canoes, and proceeded
down the river; part of our company being in the canoes and the rest afoot with the
horses and goods. At the mouth of the Osage, Rogers, the ferryman, informed us that
at the village of Cote Sans Desans, on the opposite side of the Missouri, I could
procure some perogues of the French inhabitants there. I crossed over to the village
and purchased a canoe and perogue for sixteen dollars — loaded them with goods, and
with the McKnights I hastened forward to St. Louis. The rest of my company with the
horses, joined me soon afterwards. I here heard that Glenn had sold out his fur and
gone to Cincinnati. As I remarked before, he has been among the missing to me ever
since. His note I will sell for one per cent on the principal.

I learned on the morning of my arrival at St. Louis, that Col. Graham, the Indian Agent,
had just started for the Osage country, to pay out annuities to the Osages. The two
McKnights pursued and overtook him — gave him a written statement of my losses by
that tribe, and claimed compensation, which he undertook to obtain for me. The
Osages delivered up twenty-seven of my horses and mules, and said that these were
all they had taken. The agent took their words for the fact against the written and sworn
statements of the McKnights, which could have been corroborated by the oaths of my
whole company, and neglected to retain the amount of what they had cost me in Santa
Fe, which was forty dollars each, out of the annuities of the Osages, which were then
paid in money. He brought on the twenty-seven, which he recovered as far as the
Osage river in Missouri, where he left them, at the house of a man named Rogers, who
wrote to inform me in the winter following that they were dying with hunger. Col.
Graham had turned them out to go at large, and when two men whom I sent for them,
arrived, only sixteen could be found. Four mules which were unable to travel were left,
and only twelve horses and mules were brought back; to recover which I expended
much more than their value. The agent, Col. Graham, was greatly culpable in not
retaining the whole value of the horses stolen, out of the annuities of the Osages. The
claim was proved and might and ought to have been secured by him.

In the latter part of July, 1822, I arrived at my home in Monroe county, Illinois, after an
absence of fifteen months. I was supposed to be dead by many, and my family were
entertaining the most alarming apprehensions for me. The husband and the father only,
can appreciate the joy and rejoicing which my coming occasioned, and the cordial
welcome I received. After the hardships, exposures and wearing anxieties which I had
endured for more than a year, I needed repose and relaxation, and I hoped to enjoy
them for a short time. But in this hope I was disappointed. My creditors swarmed
around me like bees, and were as clamorous as a drove of hungry wolves. I had
brought from Santa Fe about $2500, the sole proceeds of my stock of $12000 with
which I had left St. Louis the year before. This sum I immediately paid on my debts, and
offered all my remaining property to my creditors; but they wanted money. The Sheriff,
the Marshal, and Constables immediately beset me on every side, and seized and sold
almost every thing of mine that was levyable. I worked and struggled bravely to emerge
from this thick cloud of difficulties. I drove a mill and distillery, and fattened a drove of
hogs for which I could find no sale. The way was dark before me and I found more real
trouble and corroding care in getting out of debt than I had experienced among the
savages. Man in civilized society frequently requires more firmness of mind, constancy,
fortitude, and real strength of character than in the most critical and dangerous crisis of
a savage state. The poor man, struggling bravely against an accumulation of debt and
difficulty, I have always thought, is entitled to more respect than the military chieftain,
whose courage is only inflamed by the excitements of war and ambition. Peace has its
victories as well as war, and a high state of civilization as it has stronger temptations to
evil and higher though less pressing incitements to exertion, so it requires more energy
and determined resolution of mind than any other condition of human existence. Many
a brave and true man in the peaceful shades of private life will receive a meed of honor
equal to that of

Great men battling with the storms of fate
And greatly falling with a falling State.

Chapter VI

Endeavors to get out of debt — Proposition of
John McKnight — Preparations for another
expedition — Journey to the Arkansas — Ascent of the Canadian and North
Fork — Hunting Bears, Elks, &c. — Fort commenced — Conversation with McKnight and
his departure in search of Camanches — Continued ascent of the Canadian North
Fork — A new Fort — Return of Potter and Ivy — Robert McKnight goes out in search of
his brother — He returns with Indians — Charges them with the murder of his brother — I
go out to the Camanche village — Incidents there — A council — The One Eyed
Chief — The whole band start for the Fort — A guard placed over me — Encampment — The
One Eyed adopts me as his brother — He changes my relations with his
tribes — Catching wild horses — Arrival at the Fort — Fright of some "brave"
men — Trade — A robbery — The One Eyed punishes the thieves — Fate of John
McKnight — Mourning stopped — Indian customs — A dance — A case of arbitration by the
One Eyed — Indian horsemanship — Parting with the Chiefs — Conversation with
Alsarea — The horse Checoba — A Bucephalus.

SEEING NO WAY of extricating myself from debt by any regular employment at home, I
cast about for some other means of self preservation. John McKnight, who was to me a
true and faithful friend, went to the mines to obtain for me a lucrative situation, but
without success. He then proposed to make another venture among the Camanches,
and endeavor to obtain from them the fulfilment of Cordaro's promise to remunerate my
losses among his countrymen. McKnight was sanguine of success, and I fell in with his
proposal. We procured goods in St. Louis, on credit, tr, the value of $5500, shipped
them on a keel boat, and the two McKnights, John and Robert. with eight men, started
with them in the fall of 1822 for the mouth of the Canadian, where I was to meet them in
the winter following. I went by land to the place of rendezvous, with a company of
twelve men, through the towns of Batesville, ( now Fredericktown, ) St. Francisville, and
the Cherokee country, and joined McKnight in the latter part of February. We had five
horses with packs and travelled the whole route afoot. McKnight had awaited us about
six weeks. We found him with the boat frozen up, about four miles above the Canadian,
on the north side of the Arkansas and about thirty miles below Barbour's trading house.
On going up to Barbour's, McKnight and I found that he had secured the goods which
we had cached on the island above in my former trip; but that the flour was damaged
when he took it down to his house. He was just starting, when we arrived, for New
Orleans, with furs and peltry on my keel-boat, which I had left with him the year before,
and he promised to pay me, on his return, for the boat and goods. I never saw him
again: he died on this trip in New Orleans. The ice being now gone, and our boat
released, we prepared for ascending the Canadian. Robert McKnight with most of the
men, descended the Arkansas with the boat, to enter the Canadian four miles below,
while John, who was seldom separated from me, with the horses and a few men
crossed the point and awaited them. After joining them we travelled in sight of the boat
till we passed the falls about twenty five miles from the mouth, when we struck into the
best farming country I had ever seen; a beautiful land of prairies and woods in fine
proportion. Below the falls we passed a very salt spring. Elk, buffalo, deer, wild turkeys
and black bears were very abundant, and we fared on the fat of the land. The soil is
extremely fertile, judging from the heavy grass of the prairies and the large and
valuable timber of the woods, which were composed of walnut, ash, hackberry, spice,
pawpaw, and oaks of a very heavy growth and of every species. The Canadian is very
crooked and bounded by extensive bottoms. After travelling five days through this fine
region, we struck the North Fork of the Canadian at its mouth. This river, like the other,
is exceedingly crooked, and numerous rapids greatly obstruct its navigation. Our
ascent was slow and difficult, and the boat twice stopped at night within a hundred
yards of our encampment of the night before, owing to the irregular course of the
stream. Our progress in the boat was at length stopped entirely by a rapid which we
could not ascend. We made fast the boat to trees with strong ropes, put our bear and
deer skins into it, and buried the heaviest hardware in the ground, where it remains
probably to this day, as I never returned to its place of concealment. We made three
perouges, into which we put our remaining goods except such as could be packed on
the horses, and with them, we continued our ascent of the Canadian North Fork. Game
of every kind known to the country was extremely plenty. We killed on this and the main
river about twenty black bears, all of which we found in the hollow of trees where they
had remained in a torpid state all winter. In one tree four were found, a she and three
yearling cubs, which the men killed with axes, after felling the tree and stopping up the
top to prevent their escape. After proceeding with our perogues about ten days the
game became scarce and the company began to suffer from want of food. We stopped
and all sallied out to hunt: the first day furnished but one wild turkey. The second and
third days produced nothing more, the turkey subsisting us all for three days. John
McKnight and I then went about ten miles in search of game, and found a bear's track,
but our pursuit of the bear was unsuccessful. Returning by a different route from that by
which we came, we descried a herd of elk, lying down in the prairie. We crept on our
hands and knees in the short grass to within two hundred yards of them, when one
discovered us, leaped up, snorted and brought the rest to their feet. I instantly fired and
wounded one, which we found and killed, and returned with a part of the meat to our
companions, who were feasting on a wild horse. In the morning, after bringing in the
remainder of my elk, we pursued our journey and in a few days the game, became
plentiful. We had hitherto travelled through a very fertile and beautiful country, which
will in a few years teem with a dense population. The prairies are interspersed with
valuable woodland, and will make as fine a farming country as any in the Union. We
now reached the vast and sterile prairie west of the Cross-Timbers, through the
northern end of which we had passed, and we commenced our journey over the
boundless plains beyond them. This is the region designated on the maps as the Great
American Desert, though it is very different from those plains of sand in the Old World
which bear that name. A short grass grows here, but no timber except the cottonwood
and willows in the bends of the rivers. Our path had before lain through fine groves of
oak, walnut and ash as we issued from one prairie and entered another, but now one
vast plain extending on all sides to the horizon, presented no object to relieve the
vision.

We soon discovered trails of Indians and came upon a deserted camp of what seemed
a Camanche war party about five hundred strong. As we proceeded, the Indian
"sign"
increased. We next struck an Osage camp, also deserted, which seemed to have been
made a few weeks before by a war party or a horse stealing party of Osages on their
route northward from a plundering expedition against the Camanches. The country, as
we proceeded, became more and more sterile, the grass shorter and the timber on the
river banks smaller and more scarse than before. Travelling on, through a country
nearly destitute of vegetation, in about ten days after passing the Osage camp, we
arrived at the place of encampment of an immense Indian force in the summer
previous, as we judged from the signs on the ground. The river had now became too
shallow to be navigated any further without great difficulty, even by perogues. Here we
stopped and commenced the building of a Fort. One of the men, now a near neighbor
of mine, Justus Varnum, had taken a cold, so severe that it affected his hip and back
and prevented him from walking. He was conveyed up the river in a perogue for several
weeks previous to our stopping, and he had to be carried every night in a blanket from
the boat to the fires of the camp, and back again to the boats in the morning. One of the
men, when we had stopped to build a Fort, killed a large rattlesnake with the entire
bodies of two prairie dogs, larger than squirrels, contained within the stomach of his
snakeship. I advised Varnum to try out the oil of the snake and rub it on his joints as a
remedy. He applied the oil as I recommended, and in consequence became so limber
and supple as to render walking painful to him, when I told him to stop the applications.
I have frequently tried the same remedy for stiffness of the joints and think it might be of
service in rheumatism.

The Fort being nearly completed, I proposed to go out with two men and find the
Camanches, in whose country we then were, and who, we supposed from "signs"
around us, could not be very distant. John McKnight objected to my going out, saying
that he or I must remain with the men and superintend the building of the Fort, as his
brother Robert could not govern the company. "You, James," said he, "have a family. I
have none, and therefore I can better afford to lose my life than you. As we cannot,
both of us go, you must remain." At his urgent solicitation, I acquiesced, though
unwillingly, in this arrangement, and agreed with him in the event of the river's rising
before we finished the Fort, to put the goods in the perogues, and ascend the stream a
hundred miles, after leaving a letter for him in a certain part of the Fort. I wished to get
into the heart of the Camanche country with my goods, where I would sooner be able to
open a trade with the nation. McKnight departed according to our arrangement towards
the south, in company with Potter, Ivy, and Clark, the last of whom was an obstinate,
disaffected man, and went against the desire of McKnight. He, poor fellow, never
returned. He found a soldier's death and a brave man's grave from the hands of the
Camanche warriors. He was my friend — faithful and true to me — and I mourned his
loss as that of one whose place could never be supplied to me or to society. I learned
soon after this, the probable circumstances attending his death. A few days after
McKnight left us, a heavy rain fell, causing the river to rise, and we thereupon
abandoned the Fort about half completed, and with our perogues and goods ascended
about the distance agreed upon, where the low water stopped our fur-progress. We
encamped and commenced a Fort in an excellent position where the timber was
abundant. We proceeded in building the Fort as expeditiously as possible, and with
great labor soon completed it and a trading house, surrounded by stockades and
defended by our swivel, which we mounted on wheels in an angle of the Fort. Before
this, however, Potter and Ivy returned with the news that on the ninth day after their
departure they fell in with Camanches and were conducted to one of their principal
villages, (the bands in camp, are called by that name) and that McKnight called a
counsel with their Chiefs, but could not, for want of an interpreter, make himself well
understood; Potter knowing less of the language than was supposed. McKnight then
gave them to understand that he had a good interpreter in Spanish, referring to his
brother Robert, and requested leave to return to us for him, in company with one man.
The Indians permitted him to start alone and kept the remaining three as hostages.
They gave him five days for his journey to our camp and back to them, and he left them
with the promise to return on the fifth day. After his departure, Clark made known to
them by signs that McKnight's company had many guns and a cannon. This excited
their fears and they gave evident symptoms of alarm. On the same day a party of
Indians came in, as from a hunt, and the Americans were told that two Camanches of
their village had just been killed by Osages. The whole army then decamped and
removed fifteen miles further south. The three prisoners heard moaning and
lamentation for the deceased in two lodges, during the whole night. For seven days
they were kept awaiting McKnight, when the Indians upbraided them with his failure
and pretended treachery, but permitted Potter and Ivy to go out for the Spanish
interpreter. They came in much surprised that McKnight had not appeared. I instantly
conjectured his fate. A man sent by me down to the unfinished Fort, returned with the
information that the letter, I had left, was still there. Robert McKnight returned with
Potter and Ivy to the Camanche village, and here he charged the Indians with the
murder of his brother. His conduct among them was like a mad man's, storming and
raging with no regard to consequences. At length they were persuaded, on the
assurance that I was at the Fort, to send out forty mounted warriors, with McKnight,
while the rest remained as hostages. On the third day after Robert McKnight went out, I
saw an Indian on a mound, surveying our encampment. I hoisted the flag and fired the
swivel, when he was soon joined by others, all splendidly mounted on the best of
horses, and I noticed Robert McKnight on a mule in their midst, and guarded. They
stopped on the hill as if waiting for a parley with us, and I took my pistols, placed a
plume in my hat, and went out to them. McKnight pointed me to their Chief, who was a
Towash, and whom I invited into the Fort. He advanced with his band very cautiously
and when within two hundred yards of the Fort alighted and walked around to the river
bank, looking for some traces of the Osages. Finding none, but still suspicious, he
entered the Fort and examined every nook and corner of it, and then looked at my
goods. He appeared satisfied and called to his company, who rode up; but before they
would enter the Fort, they searched up and down the river bank for vestiges of their
enemies. I entertained them with boiled buffalo meat, and while they were eating I
enquired of McKnight if Big Star was at the village. He said no, and that these were
another tribe whom I had not seen before. I remarked to him that I recognised one
Indian among them, whom I had certainly seen before, and had endeavored to hire as
an interpreter, at the village where we were robbed in my former trip. His name said I is
Whon, ( from the Spanish John ). As I mentioned his name the Indian raised his
head,
looked at me and instantly cast his eyes on the ground. The Chief asked the interpreter
what I said, and on hearing it, asked me where I had seen Whon. When I had told
him
of our former acquaintance, he and Whon conversed together a moment, when
Whon
arose and threw his arms around my neck and asked in Spanish how I had been.
McKnight asked why he had not spoken to him in Spanish as he spoke it so well. He
said he had come to see if I was really the man spoken of by John McKnight and that
he had been commanded not to speak Spanish or let us know who he was. John
McKnight had told them as plainly as he could by Potter, that I had visited their country
the year before, and had now returned because I had promised Cordaro that I would do
so, for the purpose of trading with them. The Chief now told me that the nation would
not come to the Fort to trade, on account of the Osages, and I agreed to go with them
in the morning with goods to their village. McKnight proposed in the night to put all the
goods into the boats and escape down the river, as they had undoubtedly killed his
brother and might do the same deed upon us all. He was an impulsive, passionate
man, with but little cool reflection. His courage in the midst of danger was of the highest
order and perfectly unyielding, but he was unfit for a leader or guide in critical
situations, requiring coolness and presence of mind. I refused to attempt an escape as
utterly impracticable, and the height of injustice to the men who were in custody with
the Camanches. In the morning I started alone with four mules loaded with goods and
escorted by the Indians under Alsarea, for the village, where we arrived in the evening
and were met by the head Chief about two miles from the town. He appeared friendly
and took the goods and deposited them in his lodge. Potter and the other hostages
were all in safety and had been well treated. They informed me that my old and
formidable enemy the One-Eyed Chief was in the village. On the next morning, I
prepared for trading by making presents, according to custom, of knives, tobacco,
cloths for breech garments, &c., which, though a large heap when together, made a
small appearance when divided among all this band. The trade then began. They
claimed twelve articles for a horse. I made four yards of British strouding at $5.50 per
yard and two yards of calico at 62 cents to count three, and a knife, flint, tobacco,
looking-glass, and other small articles made up the compliment. They brought to me
some horses for which I refused the stipulated price. They then produced others, which
were really fine animals, worth at least $100 each in St. Louis. I bought seventeen of
these, but would not take any more at the same price, the rest being inferior. The
refusal enraged the Chief, who said I must buy them, and on my presisting in my
course, drove away the Indians from around me, and left me alone. After a short time
he returned with a request that I should buy some buffalo and beaver skins, to which I
acceded. He went away and the woman soon returned with the fur and skins, of which I
bought a much larger quantity than I wished then to have on my hands. The Chief
again came up and drove away all my women customers, and I was again left alone
with the three who had come with McKnight. No Indian came near me for the rest of the
day, and I sauntered around the village and amused myself as well as I could till night-fall.
During this time and most of the night before I had heard moaning, lamentations
and weeping from two lodges in the outskirts of the village, on account of the two
Indians, killed, their countrymen said, by Osages, but who undoubtedly met their death
from the hands of John McKnight, fighting desperately in his own defence. In the
evening the old Chief in whose lodge I staid, entered my tent with five old Indians, and
all with a grave and solemn air sat themselves down in silence. The Chief, who was a
little, low flat headed and simple looking old man, soon arose, took a pipe which he
filled with tobacco and presented it to each of his companions in succession. He
passed me by unnoticed and all regarded me with lowering brows. This I knew
portended evil, and I feared the worst. After they had all smoked, the Chief made them
a speech in Camanche, which I knew nothing of, and then turned to me and spoke in
Spanish fluently. I understood perfectly, every word he uttered and heard him with
intense interest. He asked when I was going away. I replied that I was an American and
had come from my own country, a great distance, to trade with his people, because I
had promised the Chief Cordaro the year before that I would come; that I had done
according to my promise and brought them guns, powder, knives, tomahawks, and
other things which I knew his people wanted. The Chief replied that they did not want to
trade, but wished me to go immediately out of their country. "We are going to the
Nachatoshauwa, ( Red River) and you must leave us." I offered to accompany them.
"No, no," said he, "our meat is scarce, the game is scarce; you must not go; away!
away! (waving his hand) go out of our country." I felt that my fate and that of my men
rested with this council, and that as they arose friendly or hostile, should we live or die
the death of John McKnight. This old Chief evidently wished me to start on my way
back to the Fort, and intended then to pursue me with his warriors and make my scalp
and goods the prizes of the race or the spoil of the battle. I concealed all alarm in my
demeanor, and reaching back as I sat to a tobacco keg, I broke off twelve plugs, and
took out of a box six wampums, which are strings of long beads, variously colored, and
greatly prized by the Indians. I then took out my calama or Indian pipe, and slowly
filled
it with tobacco, saying in an under tone and a musing manner, as if speaking to myself
as much as to them, I shall have to go back to my own country after coming all this
distance to trade with my red brethren, and when I tell the people of my nation how our
red brothers have treated me, they will never come into this country. I have bought
every thing that my red brothers want for war or for peace, guns and powder and ball,
and clothes for their women, and now they are driving me out of their country like a spy
or a thief, instead of a friend and brother as I am. When I had lighted the pipe, I
presented it with one hand and the two plugs of tobacco and a wampum with the other,
to the Chief, saying to him, this is better than you get from the Spaniards. I well knew
the sacredness of this offer, and that the Indian dare not offend the Great Spirit by
refusing a present of tobacco and wampum, even from his bitterest enemy. The Chief
hesitated long, but at last slowly raised his hand, took my presents and smoked the
pipe. Giving one puff to the skies, one to the earth, two to the winds and waters on the
right and left, and then a few whiffs on his own and our accounts, he returned the pipe
to me. In the same manner I presented it to an old Indian who sat beside me, and who
kept his head down and his eyes shut. I held the presents close to his face for some
time, when the Chief spoke to him, and he slowly raised his hand without looking up,
took the presents, smelled of the tobacco, pressed it to his heart and raised his head
with a smile. Then white man had gained the ascendant. The scene changed and all
was friendly welcome where before was nothing but menacing and frowning coldness.
All the others now received my presents and we smoked out the pipe in the friendship
and confidence of brothers. The Chief then very earnestly asked me if I had seen the
Osages. I said, I have not, but you know that this is their hunting ground and they may
be in the country. They said they knew this, and some further conversation established
our intimacy on a firm footing. The Chief then went out into the village and proclaimed
in a loud voice that all should prepare to go next morning, over to the Canadian, to
trade with the Tabbahoes, their white friends. Before this we were called Americanos,
which was a less familiar and friendly appellation than the former. The proclamation
was continued by the herald on horseback till late at night, each sentence ending with
Tabbahoes. "Get up your horses and make ready to go over to the white man's and
trade with the Tabbahoes. They have come a great way and brought us many good
things — the Tabbahoes are good." This was loudly sounded before my lodge, and
throughout the village all was preparation, joy and gladness.

About sundown Potter entered our lodge with the greatest alarm depicted in his
countenance, and gave me a gun barrel which the One Eyed Chief had just thrown
down before him, and told him to carry to me. This was the last man on earth that I
desired to see, for I regarded him my most deadly and most dangerous enemy, who
had probably killed John McKnight and was now seeking my blood. I asked Potter what
else he said, and as he answered, "nothing more," he looked out and exclaimed, "there
he is now, sitting on his horse. What shall I say to him?" I walked out to my old enemy
and offered my hand. He took it with a steady and piercing look into my very soul; I
returned his glance with an air of calm consideration and requested him to alight and
enter my lodge. He did so, after delivering his horse to a bystander. In the lodge I
motioned to him to be seated on a heap of skins. He sat down in silence and deep
gravity. I lighted and smoked out the pipe with him in utter silence, and then took a
silver gorges or breast-plate, and with a ribbon attached I hung it around his neck and
placed two silver arm bands just above the elbows, and two upon his wrists. The
warrior submitted to all this in passive and abstracted silence, as if unconscious of what
I was doing. I then put two plugs of tobacco, a knife and wampum, in his lap, while he
preserved the rigid and inflexible appearance of a statue. I again lighted the pipe and
smoked with him, when he arose, without a word, went out, and rode off with great
rapidity.

In the morning, all was confusion and busy activity in the village, and one half of the
band started for the Fort before me. I followed with the three men, and without a guard.
In crossing a creek near the village, a horse became entangled and I told the men to
hasten on and take care of the goods, while I loosened the horse, which I did, and on
crossing the creek found sixty men drawn up in two lines on either side and who closed
around me as I approached them. I asked the Chief — who was Alasarea, the
Towash — what he meant by this conduct. "Kesh, kesh, kinsable," said he, "stop, stop;
who knows but you are taking us over to your Fort to have us all killed by the Osages?"
I asked him if he ever knew me to lie. He said he had not, but he knew that the
Spaniards were great liars. That may be said I, but the Americans never lie. "I do not
know the Americans, said he, but I know that the Spaniards are great liars. I then
reiterated my bold assertion of American veracity and said, when your tribe robbed me
on the South Fork and I promised to visit your village on the Canadian and trade with
you, did I not go as I promised? "Yes," said the Chief. And when Cordaro came to see
me in Santa Fe, I promised him to go home and return with goods this year to your
country. You know this, and have I not performed my promise? "Yes you have," he
said, and asked if I had not seen Osages. I told him I had not. With my words he
appeared but partially satisfied, and reluctantly proceeded with me under a strong
guard, but promised that my mules, horses, and goods, should be secured. In this
manner I traveled all day, during which time the One Eyed spoke not a word to me.
Late in the evening we crossed the Canadian and encamped on the bank. I was
marched to the head Chief's lodge, where I found the men at liberty and my horses,
&c., in good order. I went into the lodge to prepare for passing the night as comfortably
as possible, and was engaged in looking at my goods, when my enemy the One Eyed
rode up and to my surprise addressed me fluently in the Spanish language. This was
the first time he had ever spoken to me. The man who had done me more injury than
any other human being, from whose hands I had twice, narrowly escaped a bloody
death, such, as I had every reason to suppose, McKnight had suffered from him — this
man spoke to me kindly and invited me to go with him to his lodge. Suspecting
treachery, I was loath to accept the invitation, and while I was hesitating, the old Chief
came up, and called me to him. On hearing what the One Eyed wanted, he told me not
to go, because "he is a bad man." Again the One Eyed came to me and repeated his
request, which I refused peremptorily, and he walked a few steps away with an
impatient, angry air, then suddenly turning around, he fixed his piercing black eye
intently upon me, walked up to me and implored, with a beseeching look and tones,
that I should go with him to his lodge. I saw that he was unarmed, while I had two
pistols, a tomahawk, and knife in my belt, and could anticipate the first hostile motion
from him; also, that we were four men, in the midst of three thousand, and entirely at
their mercy should they design to do us any injury. I offered to visit the One Eyed on
the following morning. "No, no," said he, "come now — oh! do come — come with me," in
a tone of supplication. I, at length, yielded and walked on towards his lodge, till the
village dogs attacked me so furiously that he was obliged to dismount from his horse to
my defence. He then offered me a seat on his horse, in front of him. I mounted behind
him as the safest position, when he applied the whip and flew with me to his lodge,
which we entered and were received by one of his wives with smiles and glad
welcoming. A wife of the One Eyed took his horse as he alighted. In the lodge I took a
seat opposite that of the Chief, and, facing his arms which hung over his bed or cot of
buffalo robe. I could thus watch his motions and foil any murderous design that he
might manifest, by shooting him on the spot and making my escape on his horse. He
lighted a pipe, however, and we smoked till his wife brought in some buffalo meat, of
which we ate, while she apologised to me very kindly and politely for its poorness. "We
have no marrow to cook with the meat and the buffalo are poor. It is the best we have,
and you are welcome," said this charming squaw. The One Eyed only urged me to eat
heartily, and when the repast was over, we again smoked the pipe in silence. Shaking
the ashes into his hand, he slowly raised his head, looked into my face and asked if I
knew him. I replied, yes. "Where did you first see me?" On the Salt Fork of the
Canadian. "Where, the second time?" At the village on the Canadian Fork. "Did you
know then that I wanted to kill you?" Yes I knew it. "True, I sought your life, and but for
Big Star, the head Chief of the Ampireka band, I should have killed you and your men. I
knew that you were traders with the Osages; you had their horses, their ropes, their
skins, their saddles. The Osages had come and taken about two hundred of our
horses, and I went out with a war party to recover them and punish the robbers. We
found them, and fought a battle with them, in which my brother was killed. My brother
was a great warrior, a good hunter and a good man. I loved my brother." He then talked
in a strain of mournful eulogy on his brother, while the tears coursed down his face, and
he ended in violent weeping. Recovering himself, he said that he had gone out on a
second expedition to revenge his brother's death, when he overtook me on the Salt
Fork of the Canadian, and there intended to murder our company. He then put the
ashes which he held in his hand, on the ground, and taking a handful of earth from the
fire place, covered the ashes with it, patting it three times with his hand. Another
handful he used in the same manner, and then a third, during which time he moaned
and wept violently; so much so that I was uneasy for my own safety in this outbreak of
grief. He then looked up with an altered countenance, and exclaimed, "there, I have
now buried my brother; but I have found another. I will take you for my brother;" and in
a transport of feeling he embraced me with the words, "my brother my brother." He then
placed a charm around my neck, which he said would protect me from all enemies. It
had been his brother's, but when going into his last battle with the Osages, the owner
left it behind with his blanket, and therefore, was killed. He then asked if the old Chief
had tried to dissuade me from coming to his lodge, and on hearing that he had, he said:
"He is an old fool: he does not know whether he will kill you or not, and he wants me to
be your enemy, so that he may have my assistance should he determine to destroy
you. If he dreams a good dream he is pleasant and friendly to you; if a bad one, he is
grum and gloomy and wishes me to join him in killing you. He is an old fool. He and his
men expect to get back all the horses that you bought of them at the village, and that
was the reason of their selling so many of the best to you; but you are now safe, you
and your property. They shall not harm you or take back any of the horses. Though my
men are few, yet every Indian in the nation fears me. They shall treat you well. I will
describe you to all the nation, so that whenever you come among us you shall be safe
from all danger. I will tell them you are my brother." We then conversed on various
subjects, the battles he had fought, his ideas of religion, &c. He bore proofs of his
courage on his person, in five wounds; some of them large and dangerous. An arrow
had pierced his left eye and a lance his side; but owing to the charm, or "medicine,"
which he wore, his enemies had been unable to kill him. He had been christened in the
Spanish country, and said, "I believe as you do in the Great Spirit. If I do well I shall go
to a good place and be happy. If I do badly I shall go to the bad place and be
miserable.

On taking leave, I requested him to accompany me to keep off the dogs. Take my horse
said he. But how shall I return him? "You will not return him, you will keep him my
brother — keep him in remembrance of me." I left with a lighter heart than I had brought
to the lodge of the One Eyed Chief. I counted much on the benefit of his friendship, and
subsequent events proved that I did not overrate its advantages. I met the old Chief on
my return, who asked me if I had bought the horse of the One Eyed. His countenance
fell on hearing the manner of my acquiring the animal, and he requested me to
exchange for a fine spotted war horse of his own, and then offered to give two for that
of "my brother's". I refused the insidious proposal, which was intended only to sow
dissension between me and my new friend, and the Chief appeared very angry at his
failure.

Early the following morning, I saw the One Eyed Chief coming with two ribs of buffalo
meat, and calling to me moneta, moneta, (my brother) "your sister has sent some
buffalo meat for your breakfast." The Chiefs of the army, who were all present and
heard this unexpected salutation, looked at each other in astonishment at this
extraordinary treatment of me by their greatest brave, who so lately appeared so
implacable in his hostility to me. Their conduct towards me and the men immediately
changed. No guard was, after this, kept over us, and we were treated with respect and
kindness. My powerful "brother," put a new face on our affairs and very probably saved
us from the fate of McKnight. We now proceeded towards the Fort, the One Eyed riding
by my side and talking very good humoredly and with great animation on a variety of
topics. About the middle of the day I noticed preparations making by the warriors as for
battle. I asked the One Eyed what this signified, and before he could reply, Alasarea
rode up and exclaimed, "Osages, Osages, a heap," and asked me whether I would stay
or go over to them. I will stay said I. 'Will you fight for us?" I will, said I, and the One
Eyed laughed and said they were only wild horses that had caused the alarm. I
ascended a mound with him, whence I could observe the manner of catching these
animals. In an incredible short time one hundred were captured and tamed so as to be
nearly as subject to their masters as domestic horses reared on a farm. A small party of
less than a hundred well mounted Indians were in ambush, while a multitude scattered
themselves over the prairie in all directions and drove the wild horses to the place
where the others were concealed, which was a deep ravine. As soon as the wild drove
were sufficiently near, these last rushed among them and every Indian secured his
horse with his lassoo or noosed rope, which he threw around the neck of the animal,
and by a sudden turn brought him to the ground and there tied his heels together. This
was the work of a few minutes, during which both horses and men were intermingled
together in apparently inextricable confusion. The whole drove was taken at the first
onset, except a fine black stud which flew like the wind, pursued by a hundred Indians,
and in about two hours was brought back tamed and gentle. He walked close by the
Indian who had captured him, and who led him by a rope and wished to sell him to me.
I feared his wild look and dilated eye, but his Indian master and protector said he was
gentle and gave me the end of the rope with which he led him, when the noble animal
immediately came near to me as to a new friend and master. He seemed by his manner
to have ratified the transfer and chosen me in preference to the Indian. In twenty-four
hours after their capture these horses became tamed and ready for use, and keep near
to their owners as their only friends. I could perceive little difference between them and
our farm horses. The Indians use their fleetest horses for catching the wild ones, and
throw the lassoo with great dexterity over their necks, when by turning quickly
round
and sometimes entangling their feet in the rope, they throw them on the ground, and
then tie their legs together two and two, after which they release the neck from the
tightened noose which in a short time would produce death by strangling. The sport is
attended with the wildest excitement, and exceeds in interest and enjoyment all other
sports of the chase that I ever saw.

A thunder shower now blew up, and the army stretched their lodges and encamped.
After the shower, a war party of about seven hundred men, under the command of
Alasarea, started with me for the Fort, where we arrived about sundown. Each Indian
was armed with a short gun, a bow and arrows, and a lance; some had pistols, and
each had two horses, one of which he rode for marching, and one, his war horse, which
he led, for the battle. Their appearance was formidable indeed as they approached the
Fort, and somewhat alarmed the garrison. They encamped for that night outside of the
Fort, and in the morning I made them presents with which they were greatly pleased. At
about ten o'clock the whole Camanche army came in sight, when some of my company
were still more alarmed than they had been the day before. Several who before
starting, talked boastingly of making a razor strap of an Indian's skin, now lay in their
tents quaking with fear and sweating cold drops. This was the first Indian army they had
ever seen, and their courage fast melted away before the spectacle. Come out, said I to
them, now is your time to get a razor strap. The Camanches encamped in front of the
Fort, on a space a mile and a half in length and about half a mile wide, and exhibited a
friendly disposition. I traded with them for horses, mules, beaver fur, and buffalo robes.
The former I sent as fast as I bought them, to a drove about a mile from the village,
under charge of three men. On the morning of the third day four Indians, armed, went to
the drove and took four of the best horses, in spite of the resistance of the guard, who
were intimidated by their violence. I immediately went to my "brother," the One Eyed,
and informed him of the robbery. He mounted his horse, with whip in hand, and in
about two hours returned with two of the stolen horses. In the afternoon he brought
back a third, and at night, came up with the fourth. His whip was bloody, and his face
distorted with rage. He was in a mood to make men tremble before him, when none but
the boldest spirits would dare to cross his path or oppose his will. After he had left the
last horse with me, I heard his voice in every part of the camp, proclaiming what, the
interpreter told me was a warning for the protection of my property. "Your horses are
yours," said he, "to sell or keep as you please; but when you once sell them you cannot
take them back. My brother has come from afar to trade with you and brought things
that are good for you; and when you have sold him your horses and got your pay, you
must not take them back." After this I was not molested again in a similar manner. The
One Eyed Chief spent much of his time in my trading house, and assisted me by his
advice and influence over the Indians. He allowed me to judge of the horses for myself,
but selected the buffalo robes for me and settled their prices. I bought many more of
the latter than I brought back with me and might have purchased thousands. One plug
of tobacco, a knife and a few strings of beads, in all worth but little more than a dime,
bought one of these valuable skins or "rober," worth at least five dollars in any of the
States.

The Indians had with them a great many young Spaniards as prisoners, one of whom,
an excellent interpreter, wished me to purchase him. I offered the price of ten horses for
him, but without success. I gave him many presents, which, he said, his masters took
from him as soon as they saw them, and he requested me to give him no more, as said
he, "it is of no use." He was an intelligent and interesting boy.

The Indians spent much time in drilling and fighting mock battles. Their skill and
discipline would have made our militia dragoons blush for their inferiority. They
marched and countermarched, charged and retreated, rapidly and in admirable order.
Their skill in horsemanship is truly wonderful, and I think, is not surpassed by that of
the Cossacks or Mamelukes. I frequently put a plug of tobacco on the ground for them
to pick up when riding at full speed. A dozen horsemen would start in a line for the
prize, and if the leader missed it, the second or third was always successful in seizing
it, when he took the rear to give the others fair chance in the next race.

There were six Pawnees from the river Platte, among these Camanches; one of whom
came to me and said he knew me. Where did you ever see me? "At the Osage village,
said he, when you were buying horses." I then recollected that this Pawnee with
several others had come into the village to make a treaty. He knew O'Fallan, of Council
Bluff, very well, and gave me some news of the Upper Missouri, and the traders there.
He went off and soon returned with several Camanches, and again talked about the
Osages and my trading with them. Perceiving his treacherous purpose, I made no reply
to his remarks which were as follows: "I saw you with the Osages; you bought horses of
the Osages. Do you know where Osage village is? Is it not here?" marking on the
ground the courses of the Arkansas, the Grand and the Verdigris rivers, and pointing to
the place of their enemies' village. At last I told him I knew nothing about the Osages or
their villages, which seemed to enrage him greatly, and he reiterated his assertions
about having met me among the hereditary enemies of the Pawnees and Camanches.
Seeing the evil suspicions produced by his talk among the Indians, and the necessity of
putting down the bad report without delay, I went to my "brother" and told him the
Pawnee was setting his countrymen against me. He immediately went with me to the
head Chief's lodge and had my Pawnee enemy brought before him. Fixing his dark eye
upon him, the One Eyed Chief regarded him a moment in silence, and then said, "we
have treated you well ever since you came among us. You lied to us when you said that
you had seen the 'white haired man' (meaning John McKnight) at the village of the
Osages. And now you say you have seen my brother, too, among the Osages. This is
all a lie. You are trying to make mischief between our people and my brother, and if you
say any thing more against him I will drive you out of the nation. You shall not stay with
us." The Pawnee trembled under this rebuke and walked off in silence, with the manner
of a whipped spaniel. I heard no more from him.

On one occasion my "brother" asked permission to bring, in the evening, a party of his
friends into the Fort to dance, and I consenting to the proposal, a party of forty, headed
by the One Eyed, entered the Fort and danced for several hours, to their own singing
and the sound of bells on a wand, carried by their leader. They were gorgeously attired
in the height of Indian fashion and bon ton. They wore eagle and owl feathers, and
were gaudily painted in every conceivable manner. The One Eyed wore a showy head
dress of feather work, from under which, the false hair fell to the ground; they all
danced with wonderful agility and grace, and kept time better than most of dancers in
more civilized and fashionable life. At the close they danced backward out of the gate,
the Chief in front driving them with his wand, and they, in compliment to their host,
feigning reluctance to go. With a loud shout of pleasure they at last went out together
with regularity and order.

At night we were aroused by shouting and singing on all sides of the Fort, and we took
our arms to repel an attack. I saw hundreds of Indians, most of them young men,
clambering up the sides of the Fort and trying the doors to get in. The noise suddenly
ceased and in the morning the One Eyed told me that the young men had taken the
opportunity when the old men were asleep to improve their acquaintance with me and
to get some presents of tobacco as the dancing party had done in the evening before,
and that he had quelled the disturbance and driven them off. I heard among this party,
both here and at the village where I first met them, the sound of moaning and loud
wailing in two lodges, from a short time before sun set till dark. I had made a present of
a gorges and arm bands to the Chief who befriended me so much on the Salt Fork of
the Canadian in my former expedition, and who was now in the village. A young Indian
came to me, one evening, with the gorges and arm bands as a token, and requested
me to go and see this Chief in his tent. I went with the young man towards the tent
whence the sound of weeping was heard, and when within thirty steps, the messenger
stopped and looked at my feet. I noticed that he was bare-footed; he took off my shoes,
and with me approached the Chief, who was sitting in front of his lodge with bare feet,
like the spectators who were standing deferentially around; and on the ground I saw
two women and two girls, also barefooted and smeared over the heads and faces, with
mud and ashes. These were the same, whose voices I had heard on first entering the
Camanche village. They were now rolling on the ground from side to side and weeping
violently. Occasionally they scattered ashes over their heads, and after short intervals
of quiet, arising from exhaustion, they would burst out afresh in irrepressible fits of
weeping and sobbing. The Chief arose, took me aside, and said that I could make
these women stop crying. On my enquiring how I could do this, he replied, "by covering
them with cloth;" meaning calico. I went to the store and got four pieces of calico, with
which I returned, and covered each with a piece. The Chief now spoke to them in his
language, and appeared to console them, and remonstrated against any further
exhibition of grief. Their crying gradually subsided into deep, long drawn sobs and
hiccoughs, like those of children after violent weeping. From this night forth I heard
their lamentations no more, and a few Indians who had heretofore been cold and
distant, now became friendly to me. I concluded that McKnight, in fighting for his life,
had killed the husbands of the women and fathers of the two girls who were thus
lamenting, and that they required a token of friendship from me as an atonement and
sign of reconciliation. The Indians had now discovered their mistake; that in killing
McKnight they had destroyed a friend instead of an enemy, and all regarded me more
kindly on account of their own injustice to my friend. The One Eyed Chief, who was
probably foremost in the murder, had taken me to his heart as his only brother, and was
now ready to die for me, to atone for depriving me of my bosom friend, McKnight — "the
white haired Tabbaho." The Pawnee's tale of having seen McKnight at the Osage
village, was, I suppose, the reason for dispatching him; and in doing this, they had met
with a desperate resistance from their victim, who was well armed and a most excellent
marksman. The One Eyed did all in his power to recompense me for his loss. He was
my fast friend, and exerted himself to the utmost to advance all my interests and
wishes. His wife daily sent to her "brother" some delicacy, such as buffalo tongue,
carefully cooked by herself. I began to be reconciled to a savage life and enamored
with the simplicity of nature. Here were no debts, no Sheriffs or Marshals; no
hypocricies or false friendships. With these simple children of the mountains and
prairies, love and hate are honestly felt and exerted in their full intensity. No half-way
passions, no interested feelings govern their attachments to their friends. When once
enlisted for or against you, little short of Omnipotence can reverse the Indian's position.
He loves and hates with steady persistence and consistency, and generally carries his
first feelings regarding you, to his grave. His revenge is sure, his love is true and
disinterested. You can count upon either with certainty, and need entertain no fear of
being deceived as to their operations.

A scouting war party on one occasion, brought in seven American horses, shod and
branded, a tent, a kettle, an axe, and some other articles, which I knew must have
belonged to a trading party. They brought up the horses to the Fort to have the shoes
taken off by our blacksmith, when I charged them with the robbery of my countrymen.
They denied the charge, and said that they had taken this spoil from a party of Osages
with whom they had had a battle, and exhibited, in proof of their operations, two scalps
as those of their deadly enemies, the Osages. I learned, at Barbour's, on my return that
they told me the truth. The Osages had robbed a Santa Fe company and were
themselves attacked in the night, by a party they knew not of what tribe, who killed two
men and robbed them of the booty I have mentioned. It was a fair instance of the biters
being bitten, the game played by Prince Hal upon Falstaff, who, after robbing four
travellers was attacked by the Prince and plundered of his spoil. From the warriors of
this scouting party we learned that the whole nation of Osages was very near to us;
being encamped on the Salt Fork at the distance of about a day's journey, and they
advised us to leave our present position for one of more safety. The Camanche Chiefs
held a council of war, or grand talk, and determined to go out and give battle to their
enemies. On the next day they sent all their women and children up the river and went
themselves, with their warriors, towards the Salt Fork in quest of the Osages. When the
last of the nation were about going, an Indian came to me and claimed his horse, which
another Indian had sold to me without his authority. I was about to give him the horse,
when the One Eyed came up and enquired into the case, which he decided at once in
my favor and told the claimant he must look to the Indian who sold him, for his
indemnity. Not liking the law of this decision, I paid the Indian for his horse, and he
went away satisfied and highly pleased. Before starting, the Chiefs in a body, came and
expressed great friendship for me and regret at leaving me as they were compelled to
do. They said they wanted the American trade, and united in requesting me to
encourage my countrymen to visit them with goods and trade with them. Trade with the
Spaniards they said, was unprofitable; they had nothing to give them for their horses
except amunition, and this they refused to sell to the Indians They wished the
Americans to be friendly and intimate with them, and complained bitterly that we
supplied their enemies, the Osages, with arms and amunition with which they made war
upon the Camanches. "The Osages" said they, "get their powder, balls and guns from
the Americans, but we can get none, or very few from them; this is wrong, very wrong."
The One Eyed, and several other Chiefs wished to visit their "Great Father," the
President, and have a talk with him. They would have offered to accompany me to my
"village" to see the Great Father, but said they, "you cannot defend us from the
Osages, the Cherokees, and the Choctaws; these nations are all at war with us, and we
should have to go through their country. But tell our Great Father when you go back to
your village, that we want him to stop these nations from stealing our horses and killing
our people, as they have been doing for many years! Tell him to protect us and send
his people out to trade with us. We will not hurt his people, but will defend them when
they come among us. We will be brothers with the Americans." The Chief of the
Towashes told me that his tribe lived on the head waters of the Red River, and owned
sixteen thousand horses, which were better than any I had bought of them. Judging
from those which his warriors rode, I could believe what he said respecting the quality
of their horses. He wished me to visit his tribe and trade with them. Many things did
these wild Chiefs tell me to say for them to the "Great Father" when I reached my
"village," and all insisted very earnestly that I should return to them in the Fall with
goods, and bring the answer of their Great Father and all he said about them. "Then,"
said they, "we will go back with you and talk with him face to face." My "brother" told me
to ascend the Red River in the Fall, and I should find the nation not far from the three
big mounds near the head of that river, by which I suppose he meant some spurs of the
Rocky mountains. "And when you reach these mounds," said he, "you will see the
smoke from the grass that we will burn every day so that you may find us. You can
come with but two men and you shall be safe. I will speak of you to all the Camanches,
and tell them you are my brother: and none will hurt you. You can travel without fear
through all our country; no one will dare to injure you or take your property." At parting
with the Chiefs, they all embraced me most affectionately. My "brother," especially,
showed all the feeling of a real brother; he threw his arms around my neck and burst
into tears. Alasarea, the Towash, came to me last, and sat down with a grave and
serious countenance. He several times struck his breast and said his heart was
troubled. On my asking him the cause of his trouble, he said "when you came here, you
had twenty-three men and now you have but twenty-two; one is dead. You say he was
a good man." Yes, said I, he was a very good man. "You do not know how he was
killed." No, I do not, but perhaps I shall know one day. "Many Camanches," said he,
"are bad; many Quampas are bad; many of the Arripahoes are bad; many Towashes
are bad, and so are many Pawnees. Some of all these are bad and they all hunt in this
country. They might have killed the white haired man. He might have wounded a
buffalo and been killed by him. A rattlesnake might have bit him. He is dead and you
know not how. Here is my war horse Checoba. I give him to you: no horse among the
Camanches will catch him. He will carry you away from every enemy and out of any
danger." With this he led up a splendid black horse, worthy and fit to have borne a
Richard Coeur De Leon, or a Saladin, into their greatest battles. No Arab could ever
boast a finer animal than this; the finest limbed, the best proportioned, the swiftest and
the most beautiful I ever saw. I brought him home, but before leaving the wilderness,
his speed was greatly impaired by the bite of a rattlesnake.

Chapter VII

We start for home — A stampedo — Loss of a hundred horses — Interview with a
Chief
and his tribe — Pursued by Indians — Passage through the Cross Timbers — Death of
horses by flies — Night travelling — Arrival at the Arkansas — Death of horses by the
Feresy — Loss of skins and robes by embezzlement — Start for home — Breakfast with a
Cherokee Chief — James Rogers — An old Cherokee — Interview with
Missionaries — Arrival at home — Troubles from debt — An emergence at
last — Conclusion.

AFTER PARTING with these simple children of nature, we prepared for our departure
homeward. On the next day after packing up the goods, we abandoned the Fort and
began to descend the river in perogues and by land, with the horses. Those in the
boats who started before the others with the horses, were to stop at the unfinished Fort
one hundred miles below, and there await them. I travelled by land with the horses and
met with no occurrence worth mentioning till the second day. Then commenced a
series of misfortunes and unavoidable accidents, which continued till I reached the
settlements, and which destroyed all hope of profit from the adventure, and the
consequences of which, have weighed upon me to this day with a crushing weight. As
we travelled along the north bank of the river, a small herd of buffalo suddenly rushed
out from the river bank on our left, before the horses and frightened many of them into
a stampedo as the Spaniards call the thundering sound of their stamping, flying
hoofs
on the prairie. A few of the men rode after them and succeeded in turning them back;
but their shouts and use of the whips gave them another fright and they returned in a
stampede among the drove, and thus spread the panic among them. About one
hundred ran off at a furious rate, on the route of the river by which we had come.
Placing the best rider in my company on Checoba, I ordered him to try his best speed
and bottom in the pursuit. He started and ran sixteen miles, where he headed the flying
horses that had become mingled with a wild drove, and he was driving them all before
him and Checoba, when a rattlesnake bit the noble animal on the fore foot. Checoba
immediately sickened and was brought back with great difficulty. On the following
morning his foot and leg were swelled, and he was very lame and weak. I placed him in
mud and water where he stood for several hours, when the swelling subsided and he
was much relieved. By this accident I lost all the horses which ran off in the
stampedo,
and Checoba was materially injured for life. I remained till the next morning, when
Checoba was able to travel, and I started with him in advance of the company. Soon
after crossing a small branch, I saw an Indian about two hundred yards ahead in the
prairie, who riding onto a high mound, hailed me with the word Tabbaho? As I replied,
yes. I perceived several Indians approaching me from the prairie and my company
behind, also observed them. McKnight and Adams hastened to reach me before the
Indians, who came up friendly, and spoke to us in the Spanish language. As we three
spoke Spanish, they took us for Spaniards, and said that they were of the Caddo tribe,
who were in alliance with the Camanches. Some of the latter tribe and a number of
Towashes were in their party, which they said was on its march behind them. They had
just come out of a battle with the Osages, by whom they had been defeated, and were
proceeding to tell us of the battle when I observed a party of about two hundred Indians
coming towards us and also noticed a small grove a short distance before us. I ordered
my party to hasten forward to this grove and occupy it in advance of the Indians. As
they drove the horses forward, the rope which held the pack on a horse, which I had
brought from home with me, got loose and was trod on by the horses behind, which
pulled the pack under his belly. He started forward, kicking and pitching until he had
got rid of his load, and then returned at full speed among the drove, which broke into
another stampede. Off they flew, and many of them ran entirely out of sight on the level
prairie, with the speed of birds on the wing. I lost about thirty in this flight. We reached
the grove at the same time with the Indians, who then discovered us to be Americans
and not Spaniards, which greatly displeased some. The Chief, however, was friendly.
An Indian took up and examined McKnight's gun, which he had left leaning against a
tree, and riding into the crowd, brandished it over his head, exclaiming that we had
stolen the horses; that they ought to take them from us and kill us. The old Chief
ordered him to be silent, and he said if they would not kill us he would go and bring
men who would do so, and started off in a gallop towards the Canadian with McKnight's
gun. Many of the Indians charged us with having stolen Checoba from Alasarea the
Towash, and seemed to believe the charge, and to consider us thieves who had been
preying upon their countrymen. One who appeared to be the most blood thirsty, shot an
arrow into the side of one of their own horses near the lights. The horse bounded
forward and fell dead. This act excited them to the highest pitch, and the old Chief had
great difficulty in protecting us from an attack; by an harangue and a decisive course
he at length assuaged their animosity and excitement. Their late defeat by the Osages
had embittered their minds, and pre-disposed them to view us with suspicion. Seven
men among them carried wounds received in the late battle, and by request of the
Chief I dressed these wounds with salve and sticking plaster. While I was thus
engaged, I sent the men forward a short distance, when they awaited me with their
rifles ready to return the fire of the Indians. But they parted with us peaceably, and the
Chief with great cordiality entreated me to return to his country and trade with his tribe.
We want, said he, the friendship and trade of the Americans. I always observed that the
most sagacious and far-seeing of the Camanche Chieftains sincerely desired the
friendship and alliance of the Americans. A proper course towards them will make them
our fast friends and most valuable allies. An opposite one will render them most deadly
and dangerous enemies, and especially so in the event of a war with England. A course
of justice, fairness and liberality is the only judicious one; and in dealing with them, the
greatest tact and much knowledge of Indian character is requisite for success in
gaining their confidence and securing their lasting esteem and friendship. The
Pawnees and all the tribes west of the Osages, called by the national name of
Camanches, are all of the same original tribe, though bearing various names, and all
speak the same language. They are in the strictest alliance with each other, and could
probably muster a force of forty or fifty thousand warriors at the time I was among them.
The United States should provide against the consequences of their hostility.

After parting from the Caddo Chief, I sent the company with the horses forward, and
remained behind with McKnight to watch against pursuit by the Indians. Finding that we
were not followed, we hastened on and overtook the rest of the company, and all
reached the unfinished Fort in the afternoon, where we found the perogues and swivel
in charge of the men who had brought them down the river and were awaiting us
according to arrangement. We travelled on in company till night fall, when the land
party crossed the river at a bend and encamped with the others in a grove. We
carefully secured our horses. On the following morning, as we issued from the timber
into the prairie, a dead buffalo cow was seen with her calf standing near her. We soon
saw another cow lately killed by a party evidently in pursuit of us. We travelled in
company with the perogues, that we might have the benefit of the swivel in case of an
attack. In the Cross Timbers, which we reached in four or five days after leaving the
last mentioned Fort; we again parted company with the perogues and struck out into
the prairie. Here we soon afterwards observed a herd of buffalo running rapidly with
their tongues hanging out of their mouths, and also, eight Indians mounted, who did not
perceive us. In three days we passed the Cross Timbers and reached the long-grass
prairies on the east of them. Here the horse flies were so numerous and ravenous as
nearly to destroy the horses which were frequently covered entirely by them. Many of
the horses died and all were wasting away under the inflictions of these venomous
insects. To avoid them, we travelled only by night and slept by day. I took the direction
by guess and in eight days, or rather, nights, we struck the Arkansas just five miles
below the three forks, where Fort Gibson now stands, and the point which I was aiming
to reach. I went up to the forks where Barbour's trading establishment was then
situated and there obtained a canoe. Barbour, I afterwards learned, had died in New
Orleans, whither he started with my keel boat on my outward trip. We travelled down
the Arkansas to the mouth of the Canadian, and found the rest of my company with the
perogues, awaiting us at the Salt works. Here I took an account of my stock, and found
that out of three hundred and twenty-three horses and mules which I had purchased of
the Indians and started with for home, I had lost by flies and stampedos, just two
hundred and fifty-three, leaving but seventy-one now in my possession. These I
allowed to rest one day, and on the next day lost five of them by a disease called the
Feresy, which causes a swelling of the breast and belly and generally terminates
fatally. On the day and night following, eight or ten more of the horses died and about
twenty were sick with the disease. I was too anxious for my family and too desirous of
seeing them to delay my departure any longer. Here, at the mouth of the Illinois River,
a branch of the Arkansas, and near the mouth of the Canadian, I left the few horses
and mules remaining, and the perogue containing the skins and robes, in charge of
Adams & Denison. I never saw them again and lost all — horses and mules, beaver
skins and buffalo robes. I returned home with five horses; just the same number I had
started out with. Most of them died, and those that lived were never accounted for to
me. The skins and robes were sold by James Adams, at Eau-Post, in Arkansas, on the
river of that name, and the whole proceeds, amounting to a large sum of my money,
were embezzled by him, the said Adams. He had been employed by McKnight and was
unknown to me. In every respect, pecuniarily and otherwise, this was a most
unfortunate venture. I lost by it my best and dearest friend, John McKnight, and all the
money I had invested in it, with the vain hope of being thereby set free from debt and
made an independent man. The object was a great one, and the risk proportionately
great. I lost all that I had set upon the stake and was still more deeply involved than
before. A dreary future lay ahead, but I determined to meet and struggle with it like a
man.

Leaving the river, in company with twelve men, some afoot and some with horses, we
directed our course for the Cherokee country. We found no game and for several days
all suffered severely from hunger. We at length approached the Cherokee settlements;
and I went forward alone promising the men to have a meal prepared for them at the
house of John Rogers, a half breed Cherokee Chief. When in sight of his place I met
Rogers and told him I wanted breakfast for myself and twelve men; that I had been
among the Camanches trading, and that my company was coming up nearly starved.
He replied that his tribe had been at war that year, with the Osages and had raised but
a small crop, and that he had to pay one dollar per bushel for his bread "But," said he,
"I will get you something to eat," and entering his house, requested his wife to prepare
breakfast for twelve men, and with a smile, "twelve hungry men at that." I noticed in his
house, all the usual furniture of our best farmers, and he was evidently living well and
comfortably. The men came up, and by their rough exteriors, long beards and hair,
lantern jaws and lank bodies, they strongly impressed me with the idea of a gang of
famished wolves. They glared at Mrs. Rogers, while she was getting their breakfast,
like so many cannibals, and had she not been very quick in appeasing their appetites, I
cannot swear but that they would have eaten her up. She, the good woman, squaw
though she was, exerted herself in our behalf like an angel of mercy, and in a
miraculously short time she set before us a noble meal of bacon, eggs, corn bread, milk
and coffee; there was enough for us all and we arose filled, leaving some on the table,
not from politeness but from inability to eat any more. Well Mr. Rogers, said I, what
shall I pay you for our breakfast. 'What," said he, laughing, "would be the use of
charging men who have just come out of the woods and cannot possibly have any
money." No, said I, I am not begging my way; I will pay you with goods that I have. I
then drew out my stock and sold him twelve dollars' worth, after paying for our meal.
The father and sister of Rogers now came in and talked with us some time. The father,
who was a white man, said that his son John killed the first Indian at the battle of the
Horse-shoe, where both served on the side of the Americans under Jackson. "The
Creeks," said he, "always fight till death. It takes one Cherokee for every Creek, and of
the whites a little more than one for one." Both father and son spoke in the highest
terms of Gen. Jackson, as a man, a soldier and a commander.

I requested provisions to subsist us till we could get a supply, and obtained from him
sufficient to carry us to Matthew Lyon's trading house at the Spadre. Below this is a
large Missionary station, which we were informed was well supplied with flour and
meat, of which a boat load for their use had lately arrived. "If you find the missionaries
in good humor," said Mrs. Rogers, "and do not go on the Lord's Day, you will be able to
get some provisions, but not without. I was down at the station last week on Saturday
and staid over Sunday. A Cherokee woman came in on Sunday from Piney, twenty
miles above on the river, with some chickens to buy some sugar and coffee for a poor
woman who had been lately confined. I interpreted for the woman, and went to brother
Vail and told him what the woman wanted. I don't deal with the females, said he; you
must go to sister — — . We went to the sister that brother Vail had named, and she told
me that they neither bought nor sold on the Lord's Day. Then take the chickens as a gift
said I, and give the woman what she wants. We neither give nor take on the Lord's
Day, said she, and the poor woman had to go back with her chickens, and so I advise
you not to go to the Missionaries on the Lord's Day." I could hardly believe that bigotry
and fanaticism could go so far as this, until I found by experience, when I reached the
station, that their meanness was fully equal to all I had heard. We left the hospitable
house of the Cherokee Chief with many thanks and proceeded on our way. At a short
distance from the Spadre, I was riding alone in advance of the company, when I met a
gentlemanly and intelligent halfbreed Cherokee, of whom I enquired if I could procure
provisions at that place. He said I could not, but invited me to alight and take breakfast
with him. There are too many of us said I, twelve beside myself. This did not daunt him
and he immediately extended his invitation to all, and the whole company accordingly
entered his house and partook of an excellent breakfast, such as that which his brother
had furnished us two days before. This man was James, the brother of John Rogers,
and lived like him in comfort and elegance. His wife was a handsome half-breed, whom
I presented with some articles of dress, against the wish of her husband, who refused
all pay for our breakfast. He purchased of me goods to the amount of fiteen dollars and
paid me the money for them. We passed the Spadre that morning, where I saw the
grave of Matthew Lyon, a man who made a considerable figure in politics in the Alien
and Sedition times of John Adams. "After life's fitful fever he sleeps well." At Piney I
saw a number of Indians, and enquired of them for provisions. We are hungry said I,
and have nothing to eat. A negro woman said they were starving themselves and could
not help us to any thing. I told the man we should be compelled to fast until we reached
Weber's or the Missionaries. An old Indian who stood behind me during this colloquy,
caught hold of my arm as I started on, and with a sharp enquiring look into my eyes,
exclaimed, "nothing! nothing to eat?" Nothing at all said I. Come with me said he. I
followed him about one hundred yards up the bank of a creek where he turned up a
hollow and entered a cabin under the brow of a hill: going to the chimney he took from
within it a stick holding three pieces of bacon and gave me two of them. I offered him
money. "No, said he, I take no money, but when you meet a hungry Cherokee share
with him whatever you have, as I have shared with you." Such conduct as this, thought
I, is practical Christianity, call it by what name you please. Parting with this
warmhearted Indian, we hastened on toward the Missionary station, which we reached
the next day. This was situated on the north side of the river, and was composed of
about one hundred persons, old and young, who occupied some twenty buildings
arranged in a square. Here we hoped to obtain a full supply of provisions, being
informed that one hundred barrels of pork and one hundred and fifty barrels of flour had
lately arrived for the use of the Missionaries and their families. Entering the town I
enquired for and found the head of the concern, named Vail, laid before him our
destitute condition and misfortunes in the Camanche country, and asked him for
provisions enough to last us to the settlements on the Little Red, seventy miles below.
"Well, said he, I will speak to brother such a one about it," and went away for that
purpose. Another man soon came up and asked me how much we wanted. I replied,
about one hundred pounds of flour and fifty of pork. "Well I vow and declare, I don't
know how we shall be able to spare it; how much would you be willing to give?" Any
reasonable price said I; what do you ask? We are suffering from hunger and must have
provisions. He left me, saying he would see brother Vail about it and I waited an hour
without seeing either of them. I then searched out brother Vail and repeated my request
for provisions. He vowed and declared that he did not think they had more than enough
"to do them the year round." I then asked for one half the quantity I had named before.
'We have a very large family, and if we should get out we could not get any more from
the settlements." I said that what little we wanted would not make more than one meal
for his family, and he could easily procure a new supply to prevent any suffering. "Well,
said he, what would you be willing to give?" Set your own price on your property, said I,
and I will give it, as I cannot do without provisions. He then went away, saying he would
see the others, naming them. Robert McKnight now came from the blacksmith's shop,
where he had got his mule shod on the fore feet and had been charged for that service
the sum of two dollars. We concluded that they knew the price of horse-shoes, if not of
flour and pork. Again I sought out the "brethren," Vail and the other, reiterated to them
our wants, and requested relief as before: the eternal question was again put, what
would you be willing to give? Any thing that you choose to ask said I. "We do not think
we can spare any provisions," said one. They were waiting for a bid, and I determined
not to huckster with the canting hypocrites, nor gratify them by paying an outrageously
exhorbitant pace, which they were expecting to get from my necessities. Without further
parley I left them and went up to the bakery of the Station, where some of my company
were trying to get some bread. I offered to pay for whatever they could sell. "No, we
can't sell any thing without brother Vail's permission. I offered to buy two or three
bushels of fragments of bread, which I noticed on the table in a corner. 'We use them in
soups and for puddings and do not waste any thing." My men were now furious and
ready to take possession of the bakery and divide it out among them. With great
difficulty I restrained them from this act. I told them they would render us all infamous in
the settlements as robbers of Missionaries, those holy men of God; that we should be
regarded with horror by all, wherever we went, if we preyed upon these lamb-like and
charitable christians. I told them we must go on and trust to Providence. "What!" said
McKnight, "travel on without provisions when there are plenty of them here. I will have
some if need be by force." I at length prevailed on them to start without committing any
depredation. When leaving the town, I saw Vail at a distance, rode up to him asked,
what are you doing here? "We are instructing the Indians in the Christian religion." I
think, said I, you might learn some of the principles of your religion from the Indians
themselves. An old Cherokee yesterday gave me two out of three pieces of meat which
he had, and refused pay for them in money. He told me to do the same by a Cherokee
should I meet one in want. Here you are afraid to put a price on your flour and meat for
fear of not charging enough. You wish me to name an exhorbitant pace. You wish to
make the most out of me and you shall make nothing. He was saying that charity began
at home, he must provide for his own household and so forth, as I left him in disgust
with his meanness and hypocrisy. We now left the river and bore eastwardly, and that
evening killed a turkey, upon which we lived two days and a half, when we reached
Little Red River, where we procured an excellent dinner, and a supply of food from a
settler whose name I forget. This was the first meal we had eaten, sufficient to break
our fasts, since we had left James Rogers' house, five days before.

From this place I hastened home without any occurrence of note. My family was sick
when I arrived, and my creditors soon became more clamorous than ever: each
endeavored to anticipate the others, and the executive officers of all the Courts, from
the United States District Court down to those of Justices of the Peace, swarmed
around me like insects in August. I gave up all my property, even the beds upon which
my children were born, and after all was sold, though the officers supposed there was
enough to satisfy the judgments against me, there yet remained a large amount still
due. The whole is now paid: in the twenty years which have intervened, I discharged all
my debts on account of these two expeditions of which the narration is now closed. I
lost by them about the sum of twelve thousand dollars, and after all the hardships I had
endured, found myself poorer than ever. The reader has been told how I incurred these
losses, most of which were, perhaps, under the circumstances, to have been expected.
I was the first American that ever went among the Camanches for the purpose of
trading. Before my first trip among them, their name was unknown to our people: the
Americans called them Pawnees and knew them only by that name. They were then
wilder and more ignorant of our power than now, when they have probably learned that
we do not all live in one village, and derived from their kindred tribe, the Pawnees, and
other neighbors, a tolerably correct indea of our strenth and numbers. Traders would
now run very little risk of the robberies which I suffered from them, and probably none
at all of being killed in time of peace. The trade would now be profitable; equally so as
when I was among them, and from the greater cheapness of goods a greater profit
could be made, while the dangers would be far less. Were it not for advancing age, I
should repeat the adventures, notwithstanding their unfortunate issues heretofore. Age,
however, forbids any farther attempts to retrieve my fortune in this manner. I have been
enabled through the real friendship of a brother to support my family and give my
children the rudiments and foundation of an education; which, though not such as I
would have given them had better fortune attended me, is sufficient, if properly
improved, to enable them to go through the world with honor and usefulness. I have
uniformly endeavored to instil in their minds principles of integrity and republicanism;
and for myself, to bequeath, as the richest inheritance I could leave them, a good
example and an unsullied name. With strong bodies and habits of labor, with honor and
intelligence, they will succeed in a country of liberty and equal rights to all. I have
always been true to my country, and uniformly studied to advance the interests of my
countrymen in all my transactions with the savages and Spaniards; and I have my
reward in the satisfaction derived from a consciousness and patriotic discharge of duty
on all occasions. At the age of sixty-three, with broken health, I feel none of the
peevishness of age; I look forward cheerfully and hopefully on the coming days, without

Shuddering to feel their shadows o'er me creep,

and rejoice, in my decline, over the rise and glorious prospects of my country. I have
the consolation of being able to recall to my mind several manifestations of the
confidence and esteem of my fellow-citizens, exerted towards me at a time when the
hand of misfortune bore heaviest upon my head. They did me the honor, in eighteen
hundred and twenty-five, of electing me General of the Second Brigade, First Division
of the Militia of Illinois, an office which I now hold. I was also elected, in the same year,
to represent the country of Monroe in the Legislature of Illinois, of which I was a
member for two sessions. I was appointed Post Master in the same county in eighteen
hundred and twenty-seven and have held the appointment ever since.

I would mention my agency in the Black Hawk war of eighteen hundred and thirty-two,
in which I served as Major, were it not a war in which no honor was gained by any one;
and the history of which, for the credit of the country, ought never to be written. These
proofs of the esteem of my countrymen are gratifying and consoling amidst the
difficulties which have so long weighed me down, and are evidence that a generous
people will appreciate the intrinsic character of a man, independent of adventitious
circumstances, the frowns or the favors of fortune.